Francesco Redi and the #BHL - A purpose for #Wikisource

Mr Redi is of a stature that his statue is in the Uffizi Gallery. His books are available in the Internet Archive, thanks to the Biodiversity Heritage Library.  Wikisourcers waved their magic on several of his books and the result is a superior output for for instance "Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl'insetti".

Mr Redi has four books who received the Wikisource treatment.. and then what? In response to a tweet, I was told of the existence of these books in Wikisource. I checked them on Wikidata and added Mr Redi as the author. There is nothing to indicate in Wikisource where the book came from (the BHL provided them with a DOI).

In a tweet, the BHL indicated that they are interested in books that received the Wikisource treatment. So lets consider where we are:

• Wikisource has many great books transcribed and available as an ebook
• It is not known outside of Wikisource what books are available in what quality and where they came from
• We could have this information in Wikidata. It will give a clue what is available; we can query for the books when they are in Wikidata
• What is the purpose of Wikisource if it is not for people to read all these fine books?

Thanks,

       GerardM

#Wikipedia - Ischia International Journalism Award & the Polk Award

When people win awards, they often win multiple awards. Harrison Salisbury won several awards not only the Polk Award. The Ischia award did not have a date associated with it. I used Awarder and the data from the Italian Wikipedia because that was most convenient.

There was no article for Mr Salisbury in Italian and consequently there was no date associated with him. Mr Salisbury is represented with a red link. It indicated 1990 and it was an easy manual edit.

As you can imagine, that red link could link to the information about Mr Salisbury on Wikidata. Showing this information to those who are interested in writing a Wikipedia article in Italian does provide pertinent information, information that should coincide with the new article. By comparing the information in Wikidata and in existing Wikipedia articles you know that the article is likely to be correct.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Categoria:Morti a Rottenburg am Neckar

The category on the Italian Wikipedia has been expanded with statements that help Reasonator find all the people who died in Rottenburg am Neckar. This was done by bot and it was done for the categories who identify the place of death.

This is awesome! Not only do we find all the people who are included in the Italian category, we also find all the people who have been  identified based on information from elsewhere. Caspar Adelmann for instance only has an article on the German Wikipedia.

With Kian we have a tool to make the most of information that exist in our projects. The relevance of tools like Kian is in sharing the information of Wikidata. The value is in its use. Reasonator is how we add value to the data we have and it is wonderful to see how things become connected.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The #Italian job; a perspective on #bias

The Italian #Wikipedia is really into registering death and place of death. This is why an initial bot-run by Amir resulted in more deaths in Italy then elsewhere. This bias was visualised by Vizidata, I blogged about it in the past.

Today Amir finished another run of his bot on the Italian Wikipedia and he increased the bias with over 100,000 edits.

The point is very much that Wikidata has a bias and it is based on the quality of the Wikipedia data depended on. Running a bot repeatedly will increase quality and by inference bias. People die in Italy, apparently not so much in the Netherlands.

Now who says this Italian bias is bad?
Thanks,
      GerardM

Where people died; a perspective on diversity

A wonderful new view is available thanks to Vizidata. It shows where people were born and were people died. The data is from a Wikidata dump so it is sadly static. Given that it is from Wikidata, you can safely assume that the data also exists in a Wikipedia ...

Italy is well pronounced in this view. It is because a lot of effort went into extracting data from the Italian Wikipedia. It follows that all the people the Italians care for are included as well. The fun thing of a view like this is that it is a historic view of what Wikidata covers and does not cover..

Apparently hardly anyone died in Africa in all the centuries.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#2015 - A new year, more #deaths

Death, like taxes, cannot be avoided. Currently #Wikidata knows about 12211 deaths for 2014. At least two people are already known to have died in 2015. As you can see in the screen shot, The ToolScript needed one more category for it to function for 2015.

I  documented many of the deaths of 2014. Currently there are 565 known deaths left to do. It leaves me with an issue. Will I continue documenting the deaths of 2014, or will I move on to the new year..

• One big group of people in there are Ukrainians who were killed in the war that is raging there. You will not find the Russians, the fact that they are mortal there is apparently a state secret. 
• You will not find many people from the Netherlands, they do not categorize those who died and consequently both them and us miss many people who died.. There must be an applicable policy for that <BIG GRIN>
• You will find many people notable in languages or scripts that I do not easily read. Registering these people is important because that is essential for the diversity that is so important to Wikidata

I expect that I will move over to 2015 if only because it results in Wikidata knowing about the death of notable people days even weeks before the BBC reports their death.

Thanks,

      GerardM

#Wikidata - Francesca Morvillo assassinated by the #maffia

Mr Morvillo and her husband were assassinated by the mafia in 1992. It is important to remind ourselves that organisations that consider themselves a law unto themselves are lethal and parasitic by nature.

All kinds of everything are researched and, the "gender divide" is a favourite uncontroversial subject in the Wikimedia world. FYI there are over 1,907,292 men and 352,006 women known to Wikidata. Given the high numbers the ratio between them is likely to remain the same even though there are still some  275,400 known humans to be sexed.

As I was adding men, I found it peculiar that a Mr Morvillo whose first name is Francesca was considered to be a male. A picture was associated with this person on the Italian Wikipedia and the associated text left no doubt: he was a she,

When you are adding information all the time, there are bound to be numerous errors. It was a fluke that I caught on to this one, There is no doubt that by importing information wholesale from the Wikipedias, many factual errors are introduced in Wikidata. That cannot be helped. Comparing information with other sources will indicate likely errors. Such comparisons is how we can ensure a quality that is at least as good as all the rest,
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - Bartolomeo Pepe

Mr Pepe is the first Italian who has the OpenPolis property. #Reasonator shows a link to an external website where information about Italian politicians can be found. Mr Pepe is a member of the senate of the Republic.

The obvious thing to do is to link all existing articles of Italian politicians to OpenPolis. After that there are many "opportunities":

• add an item in Wikidata for missing Italian politicians
• add statements that complete the information about them
• seek images to illustrate their articles and items

It will be fun to see what they will come up with when they have added all the missing information in Wikidata. Adding the OpenPolis property acknowledges that an item, an article is about an Italian politician, it is not providing information in a way that can be understood in languages other than Italian.

Thanks,

      GerardM

#Wikidata HOWTO - #disambiguation

The Wikidata #search results are sometimes not as informative as you would like. Above you find the result when you search for "ricerca". On many lines you get in wonderful English "Cannot auto-describe" it would probably make more sense to have something like "Nessuna descrizione automatica".

This translation into Italian is probably as helpful as the English message. As far as the software is concerned, it cannot create a description and, it says so. What the software needs in order to create a description is statements on the individual items. These combined with labels in YOUR language enable automated descriptions.

One of the lines says: "Instituto nazionale di ricerca metrologica" .. possible statements could be:

• country - Italy
• is a - institution

the article indicates that this institution is based in Turin and there are probably many more statements that can be made. Once these are made, there will be one line less that the software cannot describe.

Thanks,

'     GerardM

#Wikidata complements #search in the #Italian #Wikipedia

The search results of the Italian Wikipedia is the first that is complemented with results from Wikidata. When you search for "Alain Danilet" for instance, you will find that there is no article about him in the Italian Wikipedia. What you do get is the following:

Alain Danilet Francia politico (1947–2012) ♂  R

As Mr Danilet is known in Wikidata, it will be shown that he is a French politician together with his birth date and the date of his demise. As more statements becomes available to more items, disambiguation will become easier when there are more Wikidata search results.

When you select the R the "Reasonator" will show you the information available in Wikidata.

Had there been a Commons category for Mr Danilet, a small   icon would have been included as well.

The Italians are first to have an improved search result. It will be interesting to learn how this will change the perception of Wikipedia. Obviously they now get a bigger share served of the sum of all knowledge.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Plan your #holidays with Wiki loves #Monuments in mind

When you are playing the tourist, it is nice to be on a mission, when you are not only moving about "because that is what you do" but  when your movements have a purpose. Wiki loves Monuments can give you such a purpose.

The Wikimedia chapters of Europe are working together in one big photo competition to document the architectural heritage of Europe. Some countries like Belgium do not take part because there is no Belgium chapter and others like Italy do not take part because their laws assume copyright of Italian monuments.

This Belgium problem can be solved by its Wikimedians.

Italy deserves a quite different response. Just do not go. Ignoring Italy as a travel destination because your pictures are not yours to license is quite appropriate. A solution may be found in cooperation with the regional authorities in Italy; when this allows us to ignore such silly dictates from Rome, you will find it amazing what the Italian country side has to offer.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Italy loves its #monuments

When you go to Italy on a holiday, its monuments, its #culture and its #food are the star attractions. The tourists take their snapshots and share it with their envious friends who also want to see Napoli before they die.

When these friends prepare for their trip to one of the roots of the classic civilisations they seek out Wikipedia for information. Arguably it is in the macro economic interest of Italy to provide them with superior articles and magnificent illustrations.

It is therefore astonishing to learn that Italy cannot take part in Wikipedia loves Monuments because the state is said to have the copyright on all of Italy's monuments. Some will argue that we cannot have photos of Italian monuments on Commons. Others will argue that the swarms of tourists who descend on Italy are exempt from such Mafia practices. As monuments are monuments for a reason, it is reasonable to expect to find illustrations in images that are out of copyright.

It is likely that these illustrations may need as much restorations as the buildings that are still standing. This is something we can certainly do as Wikipedia loves Monuments.
Thanks,
       GerardM

A computer that works for Luna and Marco

Luna and Marco live in Italy. In Italy it can get hot. It gets so hot that the computer they use overheats. Their computer only works early in the morning and late in the evening. They can push at the edges a bit because Marco found that an Ubuntu live CD gives them some more time then Windows XP does.

Their mother, Luna and Marca are five years old, also has a computer. Her computer only works reliably in the hot Italian summer with an external fan pointing at the computer. The computer is raised a bit from the desk to improve ventilation even further.

In all the talk about computers something simple like the environment is hardly mentioned. PC's and laptops are thought to work in an office environment. In an office environment it is expected that the temperature is regulated.

The OLPC is made for kids and it will work in a hot environment. Luna and Marco would love to have one. It is sad that their mother has to use a computer that cannot take the heat and, a computer that is not as cool.

Thanks,
GerardM

The lack of articles on the Italian Wikipedia on the Roman Catholic church

I am working on a glossary with Christian terminology (mainly Roman Catholic terminology). We try to connect to encyclopaedic information in the Dutch or Italian Wikipedia. The funny thing is how little articles there are on the Roman Catholic church in the Italian Wikipedia.

Philosophing why this might be, we can only assume that the church in Italy is a given and that people do not know much about the church or, that it is so much understood to be known that it is thought not necessary to explain it. The result is that it is not possible to give encyclopaedic information to things relating to Christian religion in the Italian Wikipedia.