#Wikimedia and its #BLP approach

There is a huge controversy about the policies about the "Biographies of Living People". Central in all this is that there is no such policy at Wikidata. Many seasoned Wikipedians are of the opinion that using data in Wikipedia is a violation of its BLP policy as a consequence. At the same time there are seasoned Wikidatans who oppose a BLP policy similar to the one at Wikipedia. The problem is that Wikidata does need a BLP policy but it needs to be different for various reasons.

• An item in Wikidata can be really rudimentary; Marian Latour, a Dutch author, was created because she won an award. This is allowed in Wikidata but the limited information is probably a violation of the English BLP policy. This information came from the Dutch Wikipedia. 
• The initial data of Wikidata were the interwiki links. This was a huge improvement for the Wikipedias and there are still many items that have no statements. This is used as an argument not to accept information from Wikidata.
• Wikidata data is retrieved from a Wikipedia, information like "who won an award". Given the BLP policy of that Wikipedia is should be faultless but it often is not due to disambiguation issues. 

The first issue refers to a red link on the Dutch Wikipedia. When the red link is associated with the Wikidata item, there will not be a new disambiguation issue when a different Marian Latour is introduced. Currently there is only one Marian Latour known to Wikidata.

The second issue is one where Wikidata statistics indicate that slowly but surely is adding statements. They also prove that there is still so much to do...

The third issue is the main one. When an article is linked to Wikidata, articles in other languages should link to the same item or to a red link. Solving these issues requires coexistence and preferably collaboration. 

What we need in a Wikipedia is the ability to link a blue or red link to a Wikidata item. Obviously changing links is either blatantly obvious like for Manuel Echeverria or it requires a source. Technically the necessary change in the MediaWiki software may be "opt in" so that only people who care about this approach to quality make use of it. 

As far as I am concerned, when some Wikipedians find fault elsewhere and do not reflect on this proposal and the improvements it brings them, that is fine. What is relevant is that this approach allows for the best Wikidata practices and at the same time improves the BLP quality in all Wikimedia projects.

Thanks,

       GerardM

#Wikidata user story - #DBpedia, #death and #Federation

Federation between DBpedia and Wikidata became possible. As a consequence, the results of a query that runs on DBpedia can be linked to Wikidata.

Some time ago people at DBpedia created a wonderful query that shows differences between DBpedia and the Dutch and Greek Wikipedia. It received approval from the Dutch Wikipedia community.

With federation something much more interesting became possible; a federated query comparing Wikidata with one DBpedia at a time. When the query runs, current data from Wikidata and DBpedia is presented.  When a Wikipedia associated with  DBpedia changes, DBpedia may import the differences from a RSS-feed and consequently running the query again will show the latest differences.

Updating information about one particular type of statement like date of death, place of death or whatever, will always be based on the current differences.. Experiencing the results in this way is truly motivating. Federation is an instrument that can helps us improve the quality of either federated system.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikipedia - The death of Lanier Meaders

Mr Meaders was a notable potter who died in February 1998 according to folkpottery.com. The English Wikipedia article however is in two minds about his death. Yes he is dead but when did he die?

According to the category he was one of the living death for 10 years. In the text the year of his demise is correctly stated as 1998. By googling for a source another date was found.

As I am not an English Wikipedian, I do not know how to indicate sources in English Wikipedia. The date of death in Wikidata does have a reference. The question is how differences like the dates of death of Mr Meaders are found and improve the consistency in the information that we provide in all of our projects.
Thanks,
      GerardM

NB the information in Wikidata on Mr Meaders is not complete.

#Wikidata - People die; implications for another #policy approach

People die, notable people die. It is natural and it happens all the time. Many a #Wikipedia has a category for the people who died in a specific year. Such categories are what makes a wonderful tool by Pasleim tick. It shows those Wikidata items that have no date of death while a Wikipedia knows about the demise of the person involved.

This is a wonderful tool; it allows Wikidata to take care of those who died and update its data. It leaves us with another option and add one more tool. A tool that checks if the date of death exists in the Wikipedias that do not have such a category.

Consider this; a date of death is relevant when you consider the "Biographies of Living People". Having complete information for people is important. So why not flip our approach to the BLP and provide tools to improve the existing information in all of our projects?

First things first; the objective is to signal the death of a person. As is the current policy, it is up to every project to do with it as it likes. What should follow is looking for sources when one is available and preferably add at least one to Wikidata for re-use.

What are the benefits; a positive approach to maintenance and invite people to do something that actually matters now. It is an invitation to read the article and see what more can be done to get in into shape.

When the date for a death exists in an article, the article will be removed from the articles that need attention. There are plenty of valid approaches to this.

Improving user engagement is one of the objectives of the Wikimedia Foundation itself. I really want the WMF to include active engagement where it makes a difference and be as pro active as it can in this field. This is a positive approach and that is what we badly need.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - #Perfection or #progress

When you consider the intention of the "BLP" or the "Biographies of Living People", you will find that it is defensive. It is the result of court cases brought against the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikipedians by living people. The result was a restrictive policy that intents to enforce the use of "sources" for all statements on living people.

The upside was fewer court cases and the downside; administrators who blindly applied this policy particularly in the big Wikipedias. Many people left, they no longer edit Wikipedia.

At Wikidata there are proponents of enforcing a BLP explicitly so that they have the "mandate" to block people when they consider them too often in violation of such a policy.

For a reality check; there are many known BLT issues in Wikidata that are not taken care of. There are tools like the one by Pasleim who make it easy to do so. There have been no external complaints about Wikidata so far but internal complaints, complaints about the quality of descriptions for instance, are easily waved away.

The implementation of a "DLP" or "Data of Living People" where "sources" are mandatory would kill much of the work done at Wikidata and will not have an effect on the existing backlog. Killing the backlog removes much of the usability of Wikidata and will prove to be even worse.

In order to responsibly consider new policies, first reflect on the current state of a project. What issues need to be addressed, what can be done to focus attention on the areas where it is most needed. How can we leverage what we know in other projects and in external sources. When it is really urgent make a cost analysis and improve the usability of our software to support the needed progress. And yes, stop insisting on perfection; it is what you aim for, No one of us is in a position to throw the first stone.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - #Quality is a #perspective.

Forget absolutes. As an absolute quality does not exist for Wikidata. At best quality has attributes, attributes that can be manipulated, that interact. With 25,430,779 items any approach to quality will have a potentially negative quality effect when quality is approached from a different perspective.

Yet, we seek quality for our data and aim for quality to measurably improve. There are many perspectives possible and they have value, a value that is strengthened when it is combined with other perspectives.

At the Wikimedia Foundation, the "Biographies of Living Persons" or BLP has a huge impact. When you consider this policy, it is about biographies, a Wikipedia thing and this is not what Wikidata does. It is important to appreciate this as it is a key argument when a DLP "Data of Living Persons" is considered. Important is that the BLP focuses on articles for living people and its aim is to prevent law suits from articles that have a negative impact on living people.

Data is different, it is used differently and it has an impact in different ways.  Take for instance notability; a person may be notable and relevant because of having held an office or receiving an award. In order to complete information on the succession of an office or an award, it is therefore essential to include all persons involved in Wikidata. At the same time, when information is incomplete it can have an impact on a person as well. "you did not get that award because Wikidata does not say so".

Wikidata is incomplete and immature. Given the different perspectives on a DLP, most of them are not achievable in short order. The people who insist on a "source" for any statement will wipe most of the Wikidata statements and force it to a stand still. The people who insist on completeness have an impossible full time job for many years to come.

So what to do? Nothing is not an option but seeking ways to improve both quality and quantity is. A key value of Wikidata is its utility. The "Black Lunch Table" is one example of giving utility to Wikidata. They use Wikidata to manage the Wikipedia articles they want to write and expand on the notability of artists by including information on Wikidata. All the information helps people to write Wikipedia articles. Quality is important. Being included on the Black Lunch Table means something; artists are considered to be notable and worthy of a Wikipedia article.

Another example is using the links to authors so that people can read a book.

Given the size of Wikidata, it is impossible to get everything right in short order. When we can get people to adopt subsets of our data, these will grow. Our data will be linked. When we get to the stage where people actually object to data in Wikidata, we have improved both our quantity and quality substantially. As it is, looking at all the data, typically there is little to object to and that is in itself objectionable.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikidata - #Wikimedia Public Policy

To make its point about its public policies absolutely clear, the Wikimedia Foundation dedicated its own website to it. It is well worth a visit, it is well worth it to give this subject a good think.

In Wikidata the discussion was started on one of the more important Wikipedia policies; its "BLP" or Biography of Living Persons. Obviously, Wikidata does not have a BLP because it does not have biographies. We do however have data on living people and data on people can be as libelous as text. Talk about "hard data"...

With data on people, there are all kind of potential issues. It may be incomplete, it maybe wrong, it may be problematic. It is obvious that Wikidata has its problems with quality, this blog has mentioned them before.

When Wikidata is to have a DLP or Data on Living Persons, there are two parts to it. The first is having a way of addressing issues. The second is a way to prevent issues arising.

When issues arise, much of the best practices of the BLP can be adopted. Yes, have sources, Yes, investigate the sources. But first things first, have a policy, have a place where issues can be reported.

The question of quality is in two. Typically Wikidata does not have enough data to be balanced. This can be remedied in many ways. We should be more aggressive in adding data, this can be by cooperating with other sources and by investing in tools like Kian. The other part is in being sure about the veracity of the available data. This is also something where tools will make a difference.

Both a BLP and a DLP are important aspects of a Wikimedia Public Policy. Wikidata shows its maturity by not having had reason to have its DLP. Something to be grateful of.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - #today, #tomorrow

In #Reasonator you can check out dates. The first people of today are known to have died. Who will die tomorrow is only known to God. All we have to do is wait and see.

When we are all done with Wikipedia, all the living people will have died, Hmmm, that is a long time coming. First we have to kill of the ones not known to be dead yet.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikipedia - Nel Garritsen, a Dutch swimmer

Mrs Garritsen is one of only a few people who are known to have died and has an article in the Dutch Wikipedia. In that article it is currently not known that she died. We know it in Wikidata courtesy of the article in the English Wikipedia.

Every Wikipedia do things their own way. By not having categories for people who died in a given year, there is no way to know about the recent deaths known in the Dutch Wikipedia. It is also not possible to indicate to the Dutch Wikipedians what people are known to be dead in other sources.

Mechanisms like this help to ensure that proper information is available for "living people". Arguably, maintaining categories with the people who died in a given year are a valuable instrument in an implementation of "BLP".
Thanks,
      GerardM

Googlers, how about doing a 100% job as a 20% job

Biographies of Living Persons is one of the hot spots on #Wikipedia. Having it wrong for some of them happens regularly if only because of vandals and trolls. A lot of effort goes into reverting such nonsense. It gave rise to the development of Flagged Revisions, a project whose consensus based specifications are considered schizoid.

The university of Amsterdam found that changes in Wikipedia do not get reliably into the Google search engine. This is made worse by the fact that updates happen for many days. This is particularly bad when the work of a troll or a vandal is available on Google or one of the other search engines.

Neil Kandalgaonkar, a contractor who IS on the Wikimedia Foundation staff page, answers that "it is not clear to me that this is where the foundation or the community should spend its (very limited) time and resources".

There are however two sides to this story and, Google itself is one. They can be even more active in scanning the changes at all our Wikipedias. This may not provide us with an optimal solution; our computer costs do come at a price as well. Neil indicates that implementing existing protocols will provide a partial solution.

A proper solution could be a more direct connection between Wikipedia and search engines. This would improve a more synchronised coverage of Wikipedia. Given that Wikipedia articles are often selected by people searching the web, it is in the interest of Google, Bing et all to make this happen.
Thanks,
      GerardM