Sunday, April 19, 2020

@Wikimedia interconnection, what it looks like for me

On twitter a reference was made to an article in the Sunday Times. The article is about the response of the UK government to the COVID-19 pandemic. It mentions many people and mentions their roles.

It is up to you to have your own opinion, but most if not all people are known in Wikidata, some have a Wikipedia article and all of them are in the spotlight. So when you get an edited sound bite, when you want to know if someone is "for real", it helps when you can turn to Wikimedia and find what there is to know.

This sound bite about "herd immunity" is too short to be properly understood. The argument made is that herd immunity is all that we have now that the genie is out of the bottle and, who can argue with that? Read the article as well.. After some tinkering, the Scholia for Prof Edmunds shows some 235 papers, many co-authors and still, even more co-authors are missing. The subjects he covered are extensive.. check out that Scholia. Prof Edmunds takes/tool part in UK government deliberations; it is mentioned in that Sunday Times article. He is asked to explain epidemiology to the public.

Wikimedia interconnection for me is to enrich our existing knowledge in cases like this. Tweeting about it, blogging about it may lead to even more and better information like a Wikipedia article. What we as Wikimedians do does not happen in a vacuum, connecting to what happens and who the players are help us and our readers understand who they are in  these early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thanks,
      GerardM

1 comment:

Neil Carmichael said...

When I consume non-fictional media, whether it be a podcast, TV or whatever. If a computer is at hand I will start interacting with wikidata, partly to answer questions I have and partly to fill in the gaps in wikidata.

For example, in the wikiworld we don't just take someone and what they are saying at face value, we look for citations. When I see someone interesting interviewed, I find WD a good place to look for facts about them or to fill them in (and add citations for those).

I hope more people would do this, it would be great so helping understand where people are coming from and how much weight their opinion carrys