English Wikipedia awards, a Wikidata user story

I noticed that Yahvinder Malhi received the Roman Magalev Prize on Bluesky. There is an English Wikipedia article for both Mr Malhi and for the prize. I looked it up, Mr Malhi is not known as a prize winner on the article for the prize, it is however on the his personal article as a text reference.

So why not have a tool that produces a list for all awards on a Wikipedia where Wikidata knows about an award AND an award winner where both have a Wikidata item and the award winner is not on the award article. Easy obvious and it will improve the quality of articles about awards.

This can work two ways.. Why not have a tool that produces a list where awards known at Wikidata are not linked on the article.

Technically it is not that hard. It is just a few queries that are to be run on a regular basis. It is the user interface where it becomes tricky. How will a user know that something was fixed.. How will we run it for all the Wikipedias.. Will we be smart and recognise red links..

Another tool could be where we indicate to Wikipedias with an article for an award when a change happened for that award.. particularly new award winners for the current year.. It could be a list where editors are triggered to revisit their articles.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Two "user stories" for Nigeria

I spoke with my Nigerian friend Olatunde Olalekan Isaac on Facebook about growing more interest for Wikimedia content in Nigeria. I will not bore you with a verbatim discussion we had. Bringing you two user stories is much more satisfying.

Nigerian kids looking for pictures of a fireman goto their Wikipedia and search for an "onye oku oku". The search engine knows from where the request comes and shows the pictures of Nigerian firemen first.

The pictures are from Commons, in the meta data of the picture it says where the photo was taken. Happy kids, happy teachers and happy Nigerian Wikimedians because this brings more attention for the projects they care for.

At first it is an experiment that brings more traffic in their language. They then launch a photo contest in Nigeria.

People find pictures in Nigerian languages and to increase the choice of pictures to choose from, a photo contest is launched of everyday Nigerian objects, traffic signs, shops of all kinds, professionals, "be bold and show us your Nigeria" is the mantra. People find more pictures about Nigeria and even after the contest people continue to increase the selection people use for an illustration.

The Wikimedia Foundation has another challenge, there are copycats all over the world and the public use of Commons increases by 200% in a few months time.

Thanks,  GerardM 

Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence From a Randomized Control Trial

A scholarly paper has it that a paper cited in Wikipedia gets a bigger exposure in other scholarly papers. That is in itself quite huge, it speaks of the impact that Wikipedia has in scholarly circles.

When the cited papers trigger citations, it follows that the new papers represent much of the scientific development of the subject of the Wikipedia article. That makes it obvious that in order to keep Wikipedia articles up to date, it is relevant to know the papers that cite these scholarly articles.

To help editors, Scholia already provides assistance. There is a Scholia for each paper; this one is for the paper I referred to earlier and, there is a random Scholia for a subject identified in Wikidata. Just think what a Scholia specific for a Wikipedia article could be and do.

Maintaining information is a drag and there are many bots that are used to append and amend the information that we have based on what we have in a Wikipedia article. First, there is the Internet Archive bot that save guards information on websites by making a copy for the Wayback Machine. For many of the references we know a DOI and it is easy enough to ensure that we know the associated paper in Wikidata. It is easy enough to make a process out of it for a single paper.

What it takes is a different take on processes; not the traditional serial process with serial results but a  focused process that supports a user story. 

In the initial phase of a review of a Wikipedia article, the Wikipedian starts a process that updates all the citations to the existing Wikipedia references. Once the process is done, the citations are known, these papers have been fleshed out with open information and the Wikipedia will know the latest science for the subject reviewed.

Much of the functionality exists, when the user story is supported, it is not only Wikipedians and scholars but also our public that is invited to share in the sum of what we know.

Thanks, GerardM

#Wikidata user story - The Golden Brain #Award

I have added people who won the Grawemeyer Award. This award has many categories and I concentrate on the category "psychology". The people in this category get extra attention; all the information from categories and awards are included as well.

Often people turn out to be connected through multiple awards like Mrs Anne Treisman and Mrs Leslie Ungerleider. They both received the Golden Brain Award as well.

When you read the article on the Golden Brain Award, the winners are all in a nice table. For each of them there is either a blue or a red link and for some there is only a string of text.

2015

Okihide Hikosaka

National Eye Institute

US

Adding the missing people in Wikidata is not hard, just some additional work. For Mr Okihide Hikosaka there is enough information to add an item to Wikidata. When this is done for all the award winners, it is possible to create a list with the same information in any Wikipedia. 

By adding all this information, people who are into what I concentrate on are better connected. They have more near links to data that links to other people who are relevant in the field of psychology and my hope is that this will trigger people to give attention to missing articles and information.

Thanks,

     GerardM

 

#Wikidata user stories - Suggesting Henry Putnam, a great #Librarian

As software suggest what articles to write, it is relevant to understand what logic it is based on. Phenomena like the "six degrees of separation" made popular around Kevin Bacon has its scientific approach in graph theory "betweenness centrality". This is used as a basis in the research that what articles are important and what automated suggestions to make.

Mr Putnam is one of the more relevant librarians. He developed an eponymous classification system, continued its development as the Librarian of Congress (it is still in use), was twice president of the American Library Association and was a knight of the order of the Polar Star. When weight is applied to references to a person, all this is of relevance in the right setting.

When an article is to be written or improved, it helps when it can be suggested what it is that can be improved. By including statements in Wikidata suggestions can be made based in the local language. Facts like date of birth and death are also easy and obvious.

So when people consider a particular subject to be of universal relevance, it helps when associated subjects are well developed in Wikidata. When for all the presidents of the American Library Association many facts like where they studied, where they worked and what awards they received are included. When this is done for all the people who share categories, the betweenness of many influential librarians increases. This will have its influence on what is suggested for people to do.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata user stories - the sum of all #knowledge

Map showing all places English Wikipedia covers

Map showing all places GeoNames covers

They say "a picture paints a thousand words". There is no argument; English Wikipedia covers only so much. With such a lack of coverage it is impossible to understand what is missing and its relevance particularly to people who do not read English.

LSJbot has created lots of articles for the places GeoNames knows about in several Wikipedias. As a consequence through the backdoor much of the missing information enters Wikidata. There have been some rumblings among Wikidatans that the GeoNames data is not perfect.. But hey, let's make "Be bold", a Wikipedia quality a Wikidata quality as well.

For many Wikipedians, the notion of bot generated articles is an anathema. For others the fact that there is so much that we do not cover is as problematic. The good news is that more information in Wikidata will enable us to predict what is lacking in content. We only need to acknowledge that Wikipedia is not the sum of all knowledge.. yet.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata user story - Suggestions to #Wikipedia editors

Exciting is the #research done on "suggestions to Wikipedia editors". There is a paper and a great presentation. The bottom line is that when you know what to suggest to people; when you make it personal, the result is what you would hope. Consider, 3.2 times the number of articles created and two times more articles created than without personalised recommendations.

There is math involved, obviously, but the gist is that when suggestions are in line with previous activities, people will be triggered to do more. When you listen to the presentation, this first experiment asks people to translate from English. The assumption is that English covers more than most.

The slides of the presentation include visualisations showing the coverage of several Wikipedias. When you consider them, it becomes clear where the Wikimedia projects are challenged.

Leila Zia, the presenter makes it clear; all this would not be possible without Wikidata. One thing where Wikidata is different from the assumptions of the research is that there is an increasing number of subjects that have no links to Wiki(m/p)edia articles at all. Many of these are connected to existing content as they share common statements, statements like "profession: soccer player" of "award received: whatever award".

When totally new subjects are to be considered, there is already plenty that might be suggested in Wikidata itself.
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

#Wikidata user story - #Wikipedia #diversity and diversity #research

Diversity, especially the "gender gap" is one of the best researched subjects of Wikipedia. There are many projects that have it as their goal to diminish the gap they object to.

Wikidata has the best and most up to date information about any Wikipedia. People are updating Wikidata all the time, typically its information is based on a Wikipedia.

Take gender; many a Wikipedia has a category for this so it is easy to update Wikidata based on what is in such categories. When a researcher is interested in the articles where Wikidata does not have such information, articles will be found and it is appreciated when Wikidata is updated by them as part of these activities. As a rule, the percentage of "humans" with no known gender is dropping anyway.

When a Wikipedia editor has an interest in female scientists that do not have an article in English, it is easy enough to have a query for that. Not all female scientists with or without a Wikipedia article can be found this way but it is just a matter of adding them in Wikidata. When another editor is interested in female scientists with no article in German of Kannada, it is just one change in the same query.
Thanks,
        GerardM

#Wikidata user story - the #library

The OCLC is an organisation combining most of the libraries in the world. It used to connect to the English Wikipedia but as Wikidata connects all Wikipedias, the OCLC does a better job linking to Wikidata. Through Wikidata it can link to articles about authors in any language.

For many authors the connection between VIAF, the system used by the OCLC and Wikidata is still missing. Many people are adding VIAF identifiers and once a month the data is imported and all the new data pops up.

Best practice at English Wikipedia has it that an {{authority control}} template is added in the reference section of people. When a VIAF identifier is added in Wikidata not only a VIAF identifier but also Worldcat information is shown (the example is for William Keepers Maxwell Jr.). Doing this is possible for any Wikipedia.

Now to expand on this; when a reader opts in, we could show if a book of an author is available in the local library.. What do you think?
Thanks,
       GerardM

Why #Wikidata? Because it is useful!

Wikidata was useful from the start. It provides a service to all Wikipedias and after the startup, it now provides the same service to Commons and Wikisource. It connects information about the same subject, they are the interwiki links.

The next phase was to connect these subjects. This is an internal Wikidata project and it not really used. This data could be useful but it is not always up to date and the requirements for the primary use cases are not realistic and almost impossible to fulfil. The challenge is to provide sourced information for every statement.

The challenge is: how do we provide a use for the Wikidata data. How do we get people to actually use Wikidata, have an interest in the data and maintain what is in their interest.

Software developers create "user stories" to explain what their software is to achieve. Why not write user stories that show how Wikidata can already be used and expand the stories on how to be even more useful and usable?
Thanks,
      GerardM