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

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

The pain that is in maintaining lists of African governmental politicians

At the French Wikipedia, there is a category with 16 Finance ministers of Morocco. A category is an unsorted list and the French category contains a few more entries than the English category. Both Wikipedias do not have a (sorted) list.

I maintain list of African heads of state and African governmental ministers, so this is just a next list to prepare. The workflow is as follows: I create an item for a position, on the talk page I add a template that contains the data and pointers to what is missing. Typically such information can be found on a Wikipedia list, this time I have to rely on templates on Wikipedia articles.. All my lists are "works in progress" and are on my watch list.

I have added copies of the Listeria lists to many Wikipedias. The texts are in English, the data is shown in the local language. It being in English is a reason to refuse these lists in several communities.

The Listeria functionality is replaced by Wikimedia Foundation maintained software. All the list definitions and expressions exist in one place. The data is shown in a language that can be selected. When a list changes, it is reflected on watch lists. You can watch for all data and possibly for data and labels in "your" language. A project can opt in to enable the use of these lists when they don't, functionality is available to compare a list with the centrally maintained list.

Thanks, GerardM 

Commissioners for Tanzanian Regions

Aggrey Mwanri is one of the 31 commissioners for a Tanzanian Region. The Tabora Region has a population of 2,291,623 inhabitants. For most of the 31 regions we know at least one commissioner and only for the Arusha Region we know "them all". 

I have been adding information about these Regional Commissioners and this is from a quality point of view a step in the right direction. Slowly but surely we know for more African countries structures and politicians.

When you compare African countries with "Western" countries, such structures are comparable. This makes it possible to show the extend the data in Wikidata does not represent the African reality. 

It is more than likely that there are lists of the data that is currently missing. These lists help us provide the bare bones of what it takes to know about African countries. 

So who are the data wizards who show where we our data is lacking. Where are the lists that enable the people who know tools like OpenRefine to fill in the gaps. Who has the pictures so that a Wikipedia article for a Mr Mwanri is illustrated??

Thanks,

       GerardM

The performance of Wikidata - Denis Karuhize Byarugaba

Professor Denis Karuhize Byarugaba is one of the Fellows of the Uganda National Academy of Sciences. At Wikidata we know about papers that he wrote, we know this because of the author strings that point to him.

One of the Scholia tools allows for the disambiguation of these papers by linking to the Wikidata item. It is important that we do because in this way we build on the existence of African scientists on Wikidata.

That is the theory, the practice is that it is increasingly cumbersome to even try to add papers because Wikidata more often than not informs about Too many requests. When this happens occasionally it is fine but when only 10 percent of the requests is honoured, the tool is effectively dead.

Wikidata is the most promissing tool of the Wikimedia Foundation and there is as far as I know no path forward. Obviously it affects people in what they do it affects the projects that are not progressing as fast as they could or should. Even when there is a notion of improved performance it is easily missed because of the pent up demand for much more power. Power to query and power to edit the data. We are not sharing in the sum of all knowledge when it is this hard to make it available.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Prof Salimata WADE - some thoughts

This picture of professor Wade implies that she received multiple awards, her dress is particular to members of the National Academy of Sciences and Techniques of Senegal and multiple medals show. I added her to Wikidata but the data is sparse, it is better than what is there for most members of this academy of sciences.

In Wikidata we standardise names by having surnames at the end and they have a capital at the end. The result is Salimata Wade not Salimata WADE as you may find on many African websites..

When you google for professor Wade, it is easy to realise that she is quite notable.. It is easy even when you don't get much from French. There is work of professor Wade to find in Wikidata but attributing her work takes too much effort. She does not have an ORCiD id nor a Google Scholar ID. It is only because of googled texts that you feel safe to use quickstatements for what you find. It is super slow going but it is what you do when you expose what is possible.

Adding her papers should affect a change in two places on my African Science scaffolds, Wikipedia administrators permitting, the Listeria bot seems to be blocked for whatever reason.. Then again, other pages using the same bot are not..

When you consider the ratio of males / females it is 64 / 8. When you consider the ratio of Wikipedia articles I expect a quite different ratio. I do not know how to effectively make us a ration of US or UK scientists and compare that with African scientists. One reason is that I typically do not add nationality and I know the flaws in attributing a nationality to US scientists.. Whatever approach, Africa will show to be underrepresented both in Wikipedia and Wikidata.. Without the scaffolding, the preliminary data, there is no data approach to this.. No data means no clue.

Anyway, for countries like Senegal it makes sense to add the scaffolding to the French Wikipedia..
Thanks,
        GerardM

Science and Africa - what colloboration exists and how do we know?

As I am adding large amount of African scientists to Wikidata, I find that I have moved into a green field. A green field as far as Wikipedia and Wikidata are concerned.

To learn about how the information about African science evolves in Wikidata, I created Listeria lists that inform about universities by country, fellows/member of academies of science and members of African young science organisations.

What I produce is a scaffolding; basic information that enables. The information that I use from the Royal Society of South Africa for its fellows includes dates, other awards, employers and even dates of death. Slowly but surely more information is being added for these people and consequently you will also find for, for instance Rhodes University, more employees and additional papers (currently only 1385 papers for its 84 scholars are known).

A scholar like Tebello Nyokong, a Rhodes scholar, has 637 papers to her name. She is a world class scientist and has four Wikipedia articles to her name. All kinds of questions may be queried for her co-authors; the gender distribution, the organisations they represent, the nationality of the co-authors.

Obviously, African science is not well represented at this time. This is a reflection of how people perceive and value African science... In essence it reflects a bias of regular Wikimedia editors. The regular Wikimedia editors are in the west, they have no reason to consider African science but this is a bias. It is highly likely that it will be hard to get Wikipedia articles accepted for African scientists because of a lack of sources and probably a lack of this perceived Western relevance.

Adding one scientist at a time does not make much of a difference. When scientists are added as part of a SourceMD process, any and all scientists who have a public ORCiD profile are likely to get included in Wikidata. This is why so many African scientist are already known. When a notable scientist is then recognised as a recipient of an award, we may already know about the papers they authored.

The SourceMD process is no longer available. It coincides with a lack of resources at Wikidata so any and all resources used for science papers are now available to something else. Understandable, but the result is that I am no longer motivated to seek ORCiD identifiers and consequently, the process is increasingly broken.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Why didn’t @Wikidata have an item on Margaret Nakakeeto, a champion for living babies?

Ed Erhard wrote famously in 2018 "Why didn’t Wikipedia have an article on Donna Strickland, winner of a Nobel Prize?" A year later we can say that it is extremely likely that a Donna Strickland, a Margaret Nakakeeto are known in Wikidata if only because they are a co-author of a paper (technically: an "author string").

When Ed wrote his article, it was to highlight the gender gap we have in Wikipedia. Arguably relevant and important and it needs the attention it gets. However, it does not follow that it is the only "gap" that needs addressing, it even does not follow that the gender gap is the gap with the biggest impact.

When you consider Africa and particularly science in Africa, the subjects that matter in Africa most are reflected in for instance the Scholia for the members of the South African Academy of Science. As far as I now know, its gender ratio is 27% and this is a list with a mix of Wikipedia articles and Wikidata items. It shows the attention African science gets in Wikipedia nicely.

In Africa there is a huge amount of attention for maternal and neonatal care (eg Uganda) and as programs impact the health and survival of women, it follows that more women will become notable, notable for Wikipedia.

By giving attention to female African scientists, the subjects they are known for gain relevance. Their Scholias are developed, including links to co-authors and papers. It will improve the likelihood that when African science awards are announced, we will at least know the recipients in Wikidata.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Put (modern) #science of #Africa on the map

A young African scholar commented that the info on websites of African scholarly organisations was all about its past. There is a point to recognizing those who did good and consequently making obvious that the science of today is rooted in the past.

African scientists as well as any other scientist have a place in Wikidata with their affiliations, papers, co-authors and also with their scholarly advisors. My proposal is for all scholars to check if they are on Wikidata, check if their doctoral thesis is on Wikidata. Then add their doctoral advisor to their item and reciprocate themselves as a doctoral student.

Do not forget to include where you studied and for what university you work(ed). Check if your ORCiD profile includes trusted organisations like CrossRef that will update your profile when appropriate. When many of you do this at Wikidata you will be surprised what the impact will be.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Bias in @Wikidata and a SMART approach

When at the WikidataCon quality was presented, it was rated from 1 to 5. This approach has its own bias because it does not consider what may not be there. What is not there can be made visible using assumptions like: "a university has more than one employee" (employee includes professors) and, every country has at least one university..

The bias in Wikidata starts with the way it is mostly used and consequently how it is taught. People are shown what Wikidata looks like, immediately followed up with training in the use of query and the use of tools. At every level it takes considerable skills to make a use of Wikidata. The first hurdle to overcome is to understand the data in a single item. When your language is not English you are toast. This is Cape Town in Newari and this is a useful presentation using Reasonator. With Reasonator the information is easy to digest and adding missing labels is just one click away.

The second hurdle is knowing what bias it is you want to remedy. For a known bias like the gender gap, the Women in Red have lists of missing Wikipedia articles. A Wikidata gap is expressed by the absense of data. Listeria lists are great at that.. These are all the universities of Africa.. If you do not get the extend of what we miss, you have some thinking to do. When you apply this principle to the science of Africa, you find a lot of lists and the biggest issue remains; missing lists.

When you tackle a missing subject like I did for the "Affiliates of the African Academy of Sciences", you will find a source as a reference for the group and a reference on every affiliate. To ensure that the data is relevant and actionable, I added all of them, linked them to ORCiD and/or Google Scholar enabling SourceMD to link them to their papers. I added nationality because this may trigger inclusion on the Women in Red lists and when it was obvious, I added employers so that they may be included as a scholar on African University lists..

When we as a movement want to fight bias, we have to consider the use of lists and particularly Listeria list to show the developments of a subject. With lists available on many Wikipedias, it becomes possible to gain traction on what we miss. This approach is distinctly different as it acknowledges the need for more support for item based editing and it makes the point that missing data is a quality issue that needs to be addressed as a fundamental issue.
Thanks,
      GerardM

@Wikipedia talks about @Wikidata

"WD is unreliable. WP:V and WP:RS are completely ignored (from any editors). International NPOV is a problem too." It is so SMART, that the best I can do is ignore it. Then again it is an open invitation to talk about Wikipedia..  There is no Wikipedia there are over 300 Wikipedia language editions.. so even the acronyms are lost on me as there is no one Wikipedia to rule them all.. 

So forget about acronyms and lets talk Wikidata and by inference raise issues particularly for the English Wikipedia where appropriate. First, Wikidata includes more items than there are subjects raised in any and all Wikipedias. Its quality can be considered in many ways and verifiability is largely ensured because of the association with other "authorities" about a subject. Thanks to the increased use of open data, it is possible to verify that specific statements are shared, increasing the likelihood that they are correct. For some information like for scientists who are a member of the AAS Affiliates Programme, we have/may have references to the authoritative source. Such references may be on a project or on an item level, it makes verifiability easy and obvious. 

Wikidata has an issue with all kinds of gaps in its coverage. For many African countries no universities are known, there are hardly any scholars associated with them. Thanks to Listeria functionality we can monitor if and when data is added. Many a Wikipedia do not have such tools because of the aversion of Wikidata by some. At the same time projects like Women in Red rely on Listeria lists and by inference Wikidata to know what to work on.

In tools like Reasonator and Listeria lists are generated and, when you compare them with Wikipedia lists, the quality is measurably better. I published frequently in the past about the Polk award.. In its lists Wikipedia has a likely error rate of six percent. When they fudge the record by not linking at all, the quality of a Wikidata lists is even better because it is much better at linking items than Wikipedia is at linking red links.  There is a solution, it just requires a willingness by Wikipedians to cooperate. 

I understand what is meant by "international NPOV" and it is where Wikidata is by definition better than an individual Wikipedia. By definition because Wikidata represents data from ALL Wikipedias. Thanks to the people of DBpedia, there is a potential to highlight where Wikipedias differ and it is more likely that the fruit of their labour will enrich Wikidata than Wikipedias.

So a Wikidatan walks into a bar..
Thanks,
       GerardM

Adegoke O. S. - Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences

It is easy enough to add "O.S. Adegoke" to Wikidata and mark him as a fellow of the AAS.  With only initials there is no way to know the gender and to me that is quite unsatisfactory. This is when Google becomes your friend when you find Mr Adegoke is addressed as "Silvester".

There are some 384 fellows and slowly but surely they find their way into Wikidata. If there is a point to it, it is the same point why there are fellows of the African Academy of Sciences; "they provide Advisory and Think Tank functions and help to develop strategies that promote science in Africa and that are relevant to the continent".

The objective of Wikipedia and, by inference Wikidata, is to share in the sum of all knowledge. As we do not really consider what is relevant for our public in Africa and for those interested in Africa the AAS in its choices of its fellows at least points in the right direction. Adding the AAS fellows to Wikidata is a puzzle because the format of names differ. Some 240+ fellows are known at Wikidata as data but for it to become informative there is a need for suplemental data and even better Wikipedia articles.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, an exeption to my rules

When I add scientists to Wikidata, I really want something to link to, an external source like ORCID, Google Scholar Viaf.. When I link publications it is the data at ORCID I link to, I don't do manual linking.

From the sources I have read, Dr Moeti is the kind of person who deserves a Wikipedia article. Her work and the people she works with, the cases she works not only deserve recognition it is imho vitally important that they do, that you learn about them. This is why I made exceptions to my rule.

This is her Scholia, this is her Reasonator and please, take an interest.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#AfricaGap - A #Wikidata based watch list about a Africa reality II

When there are many Listeria lists that you follow, when you care about the development about the subject, it is wonderful to see so much activity related to Africa.  As more people care to work on African politicians or "administrative territorial entities", the Listeria lists that also exist on Wikipedias in African languages will be updated as well.

When the Listeria lists become part of the main body of a Wikipedia, the politicians and entities will be found. When the info boxes as presented at the Celtic knot conference follow, slowly but surely quality content in quantity about Africa will no longer be a mirage.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#AfricaGap - Guinea; standing on the shoulders of giants

This map comes courtesy of the UN to Commons. It was downloaded in 2007 by Jeroen, the language on the map is French and Wikidata has much of its data in English. The names in French are mostly the same but that is for someone else to consider.

Many of the articles on "administrative territorial entities" are written by a small group of people. I want to single out Shevon Silva, the user page expresses the amount of work that went into adding stubs for so many African territories. The important thing about data is; once it is there you can change it in any way necessary.

When data gets entered into Wikidata, certain Wikipedia things are not possible; a "human settlement" is not a "administrative territorial entity". Such conflations need to be undone in Wikidata. Obviously the human settlement is located only in that administrative territorial entity and others only by inference. Attributes like "inception date" and links to other human settlements that are part of a sub-perfecture are for someone else to add/get right. Another consideration are historic administrative territorial entities particularly those of historic countries.

At this time it is important to celebrate what we have, morph it into a format that can be used on any and all of our projects. Once it is available in all the Wikipedias, it will generate more and more links and this will put Africa on the map.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#AfricaGap - Support for "minority" languages

Support for "minority" languages was the subject of the Celtic knot conference. I have watched some of the presentations and find that there is a lot more to supporting minority languages from a Wikidata point of view than just adding missing labels. A vital strength of any Wikipedia is found in its relations between articles and that subjects of interest may be found.

Minority languages are a misnomer, what we mean is that the Wikipedias are small. They have a lack of articles, stucture is missing and subjects of interest are not found. Subjects have the same relations in any language and consequently lists expressing these relations can be shared using Wikidata in any language including "minority" languages. Missing labels need not be an issue; this is expressed nicely in this list of subdivisions of Egypt; the labels for most of them are only available in the Arabic script. A nice invite for people to add labels in the Latin and any other script.

The Welsh Wikipedia makes use of "Listeria" list in its main space and as a consequence, all items in these list can be found. They are available in a context, associated information may be available and they link to articles in other languages. The Welsh Wikipedia did implement the "Article Placeholder" and in this way they provide even more information for the ffspecific subjects.

When you consider Africa and information about Africa, there is no Wikipedia that provides adequate information. The data is incomplete, unstructured and often out of date. It is easy enough to improve on the quality of the data in Wikidata and when the information is updated in many Listeria lists on many Wikipedias, the impact is great.

The lack of coverage of subjects about Africa is huge. Less than 1% of humans is from Africa, we do not have up to date information about "administrative territorial entities" like provinces and districts. In my AfricaGap project only a limited range of subjects get some attention at this time. Obviously there is more that could be done. African cinema is one subject that is of interest to a group of Wikimedians. When they write their articles it will eventually translate to Wikidata and information about movies, actors and directors may be shown in Listeria lists in all the African language Wikipedias. This may generate interest from an African public for our projects.

There is only one purpose for Wikidata, Wikipedia and it is to find a public, a use case for the data, the articles, the information we provide. The one challenge we face is in both the quantity and quality of our articles and data.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#AfricaGap - the Subprefectures of the Central African Republic

Even the best query is impotent when the data is not there. There were no known subprefectures of the Central African Republic when I started looking for them.

Best practice has it that any "human settlement" is located in the lowest administrative territorial entity available. It follows that the city of Baoro  is in the Baoro subprefecture and, it in turn is in the Nana-Mambéré Prefecture. This is nominally a Wikipedia best practice and a Wikidata best practice.

When a Wikipedia article indicates a "human settlement" category for an subprefecture, we get it wrong in Wikidata. When we change this in Wikidata, it is still problematic when many articles consider the town and the administrative entity to be the same thing.. Then again, this is Africa and who notices?

When there are multiple items by the same name and one is about the city and the other is not, it is just a matter of making one a subprefecture. For the Central African Republic, this is rather straightforward and it just takes a lot of work to get some structure in the data. At the same time there are many articles in the wrong basket. That problem is for another day.

Fixing the data for the CAR is doable. It takes someone with infinite time on his hands to fix the administrative entities for Angola. Most of the data is wrong and entities by the same name and type often exist multiple times. The queries will show anyone brave enough to work on it.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#AfricaGap - A #Wikidata based watch list about a Africa reality

Wikimania 2018 will be in Cape Town and a lot of words will be used to express the importance of adequate coverage of everything Africa. Words do not express the extend Africa is lacking in coverage. My estimate is that less than 1% of all humans known to Wikidata (ie all humans in all Wikipedias) is African. We cannot properly say where someone was born or died because we do not know all the places of Africa, we do not know its administrative divisions and we do not know its politicians. We have not properly structured the former countries and colonies of Africa.

We do not know really about Africa.

When one guy from the Netherlands can make a noticeable difference, it is obvious what two, three or one hundred people can do who care about Africa. In the Listeria list on several of my user pages, you find what are in effect watch lists about Africa. Every day I notice what changed about several aspects of Africa and regularly I add lists to it and become more aware how limited our coverage about Africa is.

It is 13 days to Wikimania and, you can make a difference by making a difference on the subjects I follow. You can add information, you can add even more Listeria lists. The biggest difference will be by relating all the loose ends and curating and refactoring what is wrong.

What is the point of a Wikimania in Africa when our coverage is at this level? Obviously, a call to make up for what we have not done so far.
Thanks,
        GerardM

#AfricaGap - The #notability of Chemba, the district and the eponymous ward

Chemba is a ward in the eponymous district of Tanzania. Chemba had 16047 inhabitants at the 2012 census. Lately a lot of additional information has been added to the existing articles (in Swahili or English) to Wikidata.

There are plenty of practical reasons why Chemba is notable. In 2010 I blogged about the "Geograph" project in the UK. Britain was divided by a raster in order to have representative pictures for the whole of the country. Obviously we could do the same for any and all countries in Africa. They do have digital cameras in Africa, maybe not everyone but that is not the point.

Africa is notable and, we want to close the gap in coverage of Africa. So we want to know about all the wards of Tanzania, not just Chemba. We need coordinates, maps and photos. There is census data for 2012 and all this, including maps and photos, can be shared in any language once the data is available in Wikidata.

The point of all this; make obvious what we do know and what we know is missing. In the end, the devil is in the details but Africa is a continent full of bright people who can make the difference.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#AfricaGap - OkayAfrica's 100 Women

When you visit the OkayAfrica website, you are kindly invited to learn about the 100 women celebrated in 2018. Having a list of 100 fine ladies is nice but what makes them really inspirational are their stories. All of them have been added as references for your pleasure in Wikidata.

We do not have the same pleasure for the fine women celebrated in 2017. Most likely those stories existed once upon a time but as the Internet Archive only knows 100women.okayafrica.com in 2018 the 2017 stories are lost at this time. We only know about them through a secondary source.

Kelly Foster added most of the 2017 ladies and we are now adding the remaining ladies to Wikidata. We would be very much obliged when the back stories as they were published in the past are added a reference.. Fine journalism deserves a place as a reference.
Thanks,
      GerardM