What is good for the goose is good for the gander

The English Wikipedia banned a source used to prove the veracity of statements made in articles. That is in itself not a problem, the problem is that it had been a source that provided proof that could not be substantiated in any other way. 

The problem was with a feud with parties outside of the own organisation.They were threatened, abused.What clinched the argument for the ban was that they changed the narrative by altering the content they provided.

The organisation banned was not the Trump government of the United States of America.

Thanks,

     GerardM

Finance ministers from Burundi

The English Wikipedia has a list with the past and present finance ministers of Burundi. Its quality is in its existence. These Burundians are all politicians and they all shared the same position.

Some of them were missing in Wikidata. The majority existed because a volunteer added them based on information from a database. Given the list in Wikipedia some were missing and have been added. For all of them it is now known that they shared this position.

Reasonator provides an organised presentation based on the information available real time from Wikidata. This presentation is only available when you know about the availability of this tool AND the data. There is one list on a Wikipedia that will update whenever when there are changes. This list could be on any Wikipedia and dependent on articles for an individual the name of the person is shown in cursive or straight up. So with more local articles less will be shown in cursive. 

Why care about improving information about Burundian politicians? It is because it is part of the sum of all knowledge and it should be knowledge available to the public of any Wikipedia that considers it relevant. 

When a Wikipedia is interested in any list of politicians of any country.. It needs only two things, a Listeria like service needs to run and the definition of a list to start of with. This could be done more efficiently. The query could be part of a template making it easier to change the underlying query. We could have templates for politicians, awards, competitions ... 

One benefit of linking to Wikidata is that implicitly more information is available. Some of these finance ministers became presidents or premiers of Burundi. Obviously linking to a Reasonator will be an improvement from a "reader" perspective.

We do have experience with this approach. The result of combined efforts is in this collection of African politicians. With functionality like this available for use in any project, we will be sharing more of the sum of all the knowledge that is available to us.

Thanks,

      GerardM

Reliable sources for Wikimedia in the time of Minnesota in Winter

There are government engineered riots in the streets of Minnesota, people are dying. The sources for what transpires; the traditional sources of repute are suspect. Government sources deliberately polish what transpires to the extend that its lies are obvious given video documentation showing proof of the opposite. News cooperations operate on the basis of "balanced reporting" consequently obvious falsehoods get equal attention invalidating reliability for these traditional sources.

The best that can be said about USA government publications is that it publishes its policy however it no longer provides us with a reliable source. It no longer has the organisations that had a quality making their publications qualify as reliable. Examples abound; think health, climate, traffic, trade, military.

Wikimedia serves a global public. Arguably foreign sources became more reliable and respectable, more likely to provide a narrative that clashes with what some in the USA expect to hear. 

The Wikimedia Foundation is an organisation based in the United States, its infrastructure is centred in the USA. I fear for for the continuity of its products and its quality. It is not a given that this will remain given a US government going to court with the BBC because of what it considers partisan reporting. Wikimedia aims to provide a neutral point of view but given that its traditional sources are increasingly suspect, that it operates in an environment that is no longer free. Given that its bias is also in what it does not cover, I wonder how we measure Wikipedia as a reliable source.

Thanks,

       GerardM

A national project for Nigeria using Wikimedia projects

Nigeria will be going to the polls. There are over 520 languages in Nigeria and for some of them there is a Wikipedia. It is expected that there will be a lot of fake news. Wikipedia is known for its curated information so with a successful multilingual Wikimedia project there is the potential to undo or prevent a lot of damage.

When all the relevant information is to be offered in many languages big and small, there is a need for a scaffolding for the information. on all the parties, all the candidates and all the other entities that may be of relevance.

Wikidata can provide this scaffolding. For the existing members of parliament there is likely an existing item. All the candidates are included in Wikidata and identified as a candidate for the 2027 elections. Assuming that there is a project page for all the language Wikipedias relevant for Nigeria, there will be a Listeria list with all the candidates, the candidates with and without a local article are identified as such. 

Another list could include all the fake news recognised by the project and the parties, organisations, parties involved.

Technically, there are a few things that will make live easier. 

• a template that includes the query for Listeria lists - one , , the Wikidata identifier the query is for.
• all participating projects enable the Listeriabot for its processing
• a trigger that will update a Listeria list wherever it exist 

Thanks,

    PS happy 25th

          GerardM

Hon. Erica Shafudah, Namibia's Minister of Finance and Wikimedia's sum of all know knowledge

Mrs Shafudah became Namibia's Minister of Finance on 22 March 2025 replacing Mr Ipumbu Shiimi. The German Wikipedia was aware of her consequently there was a Wikidata item but it did not have the detail that she is the current Minister of Finance of Namibia. Wikidata was only aware of Mr Shiimi and not of the other dignitaries known on a list on the English Wikipedia.

Editing Wikidata is easy enough. The English lists dates in years, English articles are often more precise.. The real time result is best observed in Reasonator.. an invaluable tool by Magnus Manske. Only one problem, it does not have an audience and it is hardly effective.

Only static lists on all Wikipedias provide a global audience. All these lists need to be updated everywhere whenever needed when we are to share the sum of all knowledge. Listeria is a tool that has the potential to do just that..  A bot may run on a Wikipedia and update when the underlying data at Wikidata changes. 

Now check out this launch page for African politicians. It includes all African countries some of its national political positions. Each line presents a Listeria list that is updated whenever an update is known to Wikidata. Most relevant is that there are links to nine African language Wikipedias. When all these Listeria lists are present on these Wikipedias, the information is available as long as the Listeriabot is active. 

We can share the sum of all lists on all our Wikipedias. The lists link to an article when there is one and links to Wikidata when it is not. Key is that the information is as up to date as we have it and therefore it supports the Wikimedia mission more effectively than our current fragmented practice.

Thanks,

      GerardM