SignWriting 2025 - A response to a Wiktionary initiative.

On Diff, the aggregator for Wikimedia news, a case was made to support sign languages particularly for Wiktionary. Sign languages are used to communicate, there are many hundreds of sign languages, only half the people who know how to sign are deaf. There is one writing system, SignWriting that can be used for all sign languages.

There are a few misconceptions in the Wiktionary proposal; with over 300 sign languages, there is a potential for over 300 translations for each concept. Sign languages are not to be linked to countries; there are countries with multiple indigenous sign languages. All languages have their own ISO-639 language code the same, ase for instance is the code for American Sign Language. 

The characters of the SignWriting script are included in the same standard that includes all other scripts like Cyrillic or Devangari. The consequence is that as your computer supports UNICODE, your computer will be able to show texts written in SignWriting when you have a supporting font. At that Google may be your friend with its Noto Sans font and the Wikimedia Foundation may provision readers of its projects content.

A decade ago, there was a concerted effort from within the SignWriting movement to have Wikipedias in multiple sign languages. Much of what transpired can still be read on my blog. At the time the Wikimedia Foundation did not have the bandwidth to support the technical requirements in MediaWiki. It is why the deaf who express themselves with their sign language have no platform within the Wikimedia Foundation.

Thanks,

        GerardM

Growing exposure for Wikimedia content

The downward trend in the number of readers and editors of Wikipedia is a big issue but maintenance is imho as problematic. Too many articles are out of date, need an update or are factually problematic. There is not one but there are 250+ Wikipedias intended to serve the sum of all available knowledge and they all need more readers and editors to amend and append.

When we go back to first principles, references are the basis for every article and item. We could serve all known references and add reference material for people to find. They could be youtubes, scholarly papers, articles from newspapers and all that in any language. New references are linked to subjects and this makes it easier to contribute to Wikipedia articles. 

Obviously Wikipedia articles, Commons pictures, all are to be included in the search results. There is also an opportunity for Abstract-Wikipedia; even a one liner in every language is an important result particularly when it expands as more information becomes available in Wikidata.

The objective is more eyeballs for what we have on offer. "WikiFind" will expose content from partners like Internet Archive. It may expose content from YouTube, newspapers whatever.. When new content is to be exposed, it is to be linked to a topic as known in Wikidata. 

The objective is to increase our public and I may rain on the parade of many improvements considered for Wikipedia but will they improve quality or will they improve exposure. Improvements are nice to have, exposure is a must have.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Professor Commandeur goes to Kenia - A "Wikifind" perspective

At the celebration of 25 years nl.wikipedia.org there was a game and the objective was to meet and greet fellow Wikipedians and learn about their claim to fame. I am grateful that I went as I met so many wonderful people that I had not been in contact with for many years.

Monica approached me and as we got acquainted, I learned that she was a professor of the Wageningen University. I expected that she was known to Wikidata, I was surprised by the negative, I attributed two papers to a newly minted Wikidata identifier, took a picture and added it to Commons and hey presto there was a start of a Scholia for Monica A.M. Commandeur.

We talked about "vermiculture", about African worms (they have appendages), a trip to Kenya, about ORCiD (her identifier was not public) and about Youtube. 

• Wikidata did not know about vermiculture it was thought to be the same as vermicompost .. and then I find an item without an English label :)
• African worms and their feet? Google is not my friend
• Monica will travel to Kenya, we discussed why ORCiD is important; it resulted in her opening up her ORCiD identifier :)
• The registration on YouTube of a seminar has been made public.. now for me to find them :|

In a previous post I proposed a new Wikimedia project, WikiFind. With a little effort professor Commandeur has expandeded the presence for her work. When organisations like ORCiD, WMF, CrossRef .. name them all collaborate on making freely available information findable, we would do so much better in sharing the sum of all the knowledge available to us.

Thanks,

      GerardM

Retracted and outdated sources from a Wikimedia perspective

A recent article related to the quality of Wikipedia references indicates that when a paper is retracted, the median time for a correction is 3.68 years. There is a bot for that, the RetractionBot, updated in 2024, the problem is that people have to use it AND "expecting Wikipedia editors to continuously monitor every citation for new retractions is unrealistic"...

HOWEVER

Retracted papers are hardly our only problem. Information is often superseded in later publications. This does not mean that earlier works are retracted it means that the information our articles are based on is stale. There is no bot for that AND expecting Wikipedia editors to continuously monitoring for new information is unrealistic...

ALSO

As our existing content needs maintenance, our public is diminishing and all our communities of volunteer contributors have their own objectives we have a problem; what to do?

Why not flip the script, why not provide a search engine that includes all our references, our articles and items. We enrich it with information from Retraction Watch, Crossref, ORCiD and obviously the Internet Archive. As the new "WikiFind" community adds new information items, it links them to articles and items and builds a field with potential new references. 

The objective of the "WikiFind" search engine is to be informative and provide a structure that brings our projects together AND present all of this to a new public. The implementation should be similar to how we started Commons; at the time Erik Möller started a new Wiki and only later did it serve images to Wikipedia articles... Maybe a challenge this time.

Thanks,

      GerardM

Ziyad Al-Aly, clinical epidemiologist from a Wikimedia perspective

 Ars Technica featured an article "Heart protection from COVID shots remains amid updates, study finds".  The article refers to multiple studies and mentions Ziyad Al-Aly, one of the authors of several of the studies. 

When you consider Dr Al-Aly as a Wikimedia consumer, then his Scholia produces the most entries into the Wikimedia rabbit hole like publications, co-authors and topics. Drilling down, a

Wikipedia article informs about his education and awards.

As a Wikimedia contributor, there is so much that can be done: attributing articles, adding missing articles thanks to the ORCiD-scraper, adding co-authors to papers.. And then there is the deep dive, adding for instance the awards known to the Wikipedia for instance.

Now for the Wikimedia perspective; it is losing its audience. Without an audience what motivates people to contribute? Without contributors, who maintains our content? Its main perspective for the future should be: how will we reach a public for the sum of all the knowledge we have on offer.

The essence of all that knowledge is in known references. The Ars Technica article could obviously serve as a reference for Wikimedia content. When the Wikimedia Foundation were to offer references and sources in a search engine, traditional Wikimedia content is available for a deep dive. When these sources are associated with topics that have a Wikipedia article, it also serves as a tool to update these articles.

A WMF search engine based on sources and references is not commercial, would provide a distinct service and will entice renewed interest in its projects.

Thanks,

       GerardM

About screw worms and the plague, with a Wikimedia angle

Screw worms and the plague are indigenous to the USA. When left untreated they are deadly. They appear regularly as key in the Youtubes the algorithm presents me. Consequently I often add data on Wikidata.

Recently I did some work on Kenneth L. Gage. He is/was with the CDC. Given the amount of papers to his name, he has/had a distinguished career. Mr Cage has/had many co-authors. Many of them work/worked at the CDC. They are the ones who protect/protected the USA against the plague.

At Wikidata we know about Mr Gage, his papers, his expertise. We could know about his career at the CDC and the careers of his co-authors. Given that these are facts that you do not easily find anywhere else it easily gives the WMF a platform with established facts, not necessarily neutral from a political point of view but verifiably true. 

With a platform where Youtubes get connected to Wikimedia sources we could provide information that the USA press no longer offers. They are bought and verifiably no longer bring the news, all the news.

Thanks,

      GerardM

Watching informative Youtubes with a Wikimedia twist

When I go to work, I typically listen to youtubes like this one on the train. The narrative is typically much better than the visuals; not looking gives me room to edit Wikidata at the same time.

I found this youtube because I searched for "trophic rewilding" and it suggests that the introduction of jaguars in Yellowstone may bring equivalent changes to Yellowstone of what Wolves famously did. Suggests, because there is no proof that jaguars have actually been introduced. 

However, there are scientific papers on the subject; eg this DOI. It was included in Wikidata in 2021 and,  a lot of additional information is missing that can be added. Adding co-authors or citations is easy and the best bit; the Scholia for this paper gets automagically updated.

What I would like is an environment to link "youtubes" to information from the Wikimedia ecosystem. With links to a Wikipedia article and a Scholia to the subject, links to other subjects mentioned or scientists mentioned. Also links to what Commons has to offer.

As such an environment will expand when "youtubes" are added, it may also be the place where the issues are presented about the quality of the information provided. It should be useful and it may generate its own public.

Thanks,

       GerardM