Wikimania is on and Scholia is off

Wikimania the wonderful gathering of Wikimedians is on in Paris. I have been there before, I have presented at several Wikimanias. It is truly awesome. It is the one place where all aspects of what the Wikimedia Foundation is come together, mingle and have a conversation. There is one inescapable fact; it is mostly about Wikipedia and at that, if it does not fit the English Wikipedia community, conversations will not bring you much.

The two biggest revolutions that happened lead to two new projects and apart from their function they did not change English Wikipedia. It was too expensive to have the same picture on all projects, pictures are now stored at Commons. The English community objected to its policy of only freely licensed pictures so nothing changed as they may still serve licensed materials as an illustration. Articles on the same subject were linked through "interwiki links" the process to maintain them was too costly, a centralised database was created, the links are now stable at Wikidata. The English community was not bothered because it were nerds mostly from other projects who maintained those interwiki links.

The decisions to have both Commons and Wikidata were made by the Wikimedia Foundation.

The 25th birthday of Wikipedia is celebrated in Paris and it has its challenges and opportunities. The biggest challenges in my opinion are communities that are aging and decreasing in size and information that is outdated or incomplete. Opportunities can be found in the "sum of all the knowledge that we already have". One iterative question for an AI: "What are the inconsistencies within our Wikipedias". Another is to have Abstract Wikipedia provide information for all the misses when an article is locally missing.

Why not challenge our public to be part of the solution?

Thanks,

       GerardM

PS Great tools like Scholia should be adopted by the Foundation so that it is always available and we could open up our references in a more informed fashion.

#Statistics for National Young Academies

The Global Young Academy is linked to many national young academies. It and they represent many relevant scientists. They represent all of science and, they are interested in representing science to the public. The question: how can we make them visible.

First you add the orgs to Wikidata and then the scientists to the orgs. When you then add the same Listeria lists to Wikipedias, we will see a picture when we have one and we may notice who has a local Wikipedia article.

There are many interesting statistics possible:

• the gender ratio
• the different professions in the mix
• awards received 
• the known number of publications per person
• the organisations they are employed at

However, first things first. It is my intention to include all the current members and the alumni of the Young Academy of Sweden before Wikimania.. Second, these scholars are bright :) once they put their mind to it, they will help themselves to nice statistics based on the info we accumulate in Wikidata. They can be linked to on the Wikipedia pages.

Thanks,

     GerardM

#Wikipedia, where is all that research?

Pine, a well known Wikipedian, asked attention for the registration of the 2018 "State of Wikimedia Research". Benjamin Mako Hill mentioned that a humongous amount of publications were published on Wikipedia in the last year alone.

That is great.

I checked the numbers using the Scholia tool and was a bit disappointed. The total numbers was "only" 337 for every year. Benjamin uses different tools; he mentioned his use of Google Scholar and indeed it shows so much more.

I was really pleased with Daniel Mietchen helping out on the subject of "probiotics" and I asked him if he could run his bot for the subject of "Wikipedia" and "Wikidata". But nevermind what he decides to do, running a bot adding key words to research is not scalable when you consider the overwhelming amount of research known to Wikidata. It is not only running it one time, it is also adding key words for any and all new research entered to Wikidata.

Given that we work in a Wiki way, this is totally acceptable. We do what we can, what takes our fancy and slowly but surely new approaches, tools improve on the quality and quantity of the data that we have. When Scholia was a commercial enterprise it would be different; the exposure and use of data would be a primary concern.
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

#Wikimania - What have we learned, how to experience it

We have not all been to Esino Lario. It is where Wikimania 2016 happened. That does not mean that it is not possible to see many of the presentations. You may find them on YouTube, maybe elsewhere. The same goes for presentations of previous Wikimania's.

In the history of Wikipedia and our movement, these presentations are notable. It even makes the people who presented notable. As I have been watching several presentations, as I argued that we are really bad at recognising our own notability, I have created a list; they link to lists of presentations for previous Wikimania's. The cool thing is that they are updated regularly by the ListeriaBot. So when I or someone else adds a Wikimania talk, the talk will magically appear.

What you find is rather basic but it works. You will be linked to the presentation on YouTube, You will be linked to the items for the "author", the language used for the presentation and the talk itself. At this stage Wikidata like Commons is mostly a repository. For best effect use Reasonator. Compare Wikidata with Reasonator for the presentation of James Heilman for instance..

I am really happy to have been helped by TweetsFactsAndQueries. He helped a lot in getting the SPARQL queries in a reasonable shape. He figured out how to show only the YouTube video ID instead of the full URL. It is probably possible to show an icon instead but that is for later. What is missing are links to the presentation (the power point) and the submission paper. I have no idea yet how that is to be modelled in Wikidata.

It is important to include such data for several reasons. First it brings access to the presentations for the people who are interested. Secondly it documents what we do puts a timestamp to our thinking in time. Thirdly it documents our history.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikimania - James Heilman on #quality and #language support

James Heilman presented at Wikimania 2016. I have not been to Wikimania and even the people who went to Wikimania may not have listened in. James had a lot to say about quality and the power of having information in "other languages". The talk is powerful and the arguments are compelling. At this time only 48 views of the talk on YouTube,

Thanks,

     GerardM

#Wikimania and #Wikidata #dogfooding

Being critical is one thing, showing how a difference can be made one item at a time is how to make a difference. At the latest Wikimania many interesting and relevant presentations were made. So far Wikimania talks were missing at Wikidata and as I have been watching several talks, I have added these talks largely using the Ted talks as a model.

What you find are only some of the talks, it is easy to add more and by adding the YouTube Video ID it is possible to see the presentations directly from the Reasonator.

So when you want to add your presentation, it is easy.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikimedia - #notadog and #notmemberofthepack

It is controversial when you tell the #Wikipedia crowd that they do not look after their own. I am not a Wikipedian, I do not want to be as my experiences are not that positive. It is not that I do not care deeply about free content and the opportunities the Wikimedia Foundation offers.

My point is simple; as a community we seem to be only interested in the production and maintenance of content and not really in the quality of the reader experience / the consumption of all the good stuff that exists. I will support it with a number of examples.

Wikimania is the annual Wikimedia conference and it boasts many high grade presentations important for the understanding of the past and the history of what we do. For this reason it makes sense to do a thorough job and include all the presentations in Wikidata so that we provide the same opportunity to explore this content as we do for TED conferences and presentations. When we do, we will honour the many Wikimedians who presented in the past. This may prove controversial because of the many conflicting notions of notability.

Wikisource is "Wikimedia project, an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki". For readers there is one vital problem. Much of it are works in progress, some need a finishing touch others still need a lot of tender loving care. With a different approach to finished goods and, it is easy enough to know the status of sources, a clean user interface can be delivered to potential readers expanding the reach of the work that is done.

Commons is an "online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files, part of the Wikimedia Foundation". As a repository it functions really well. Large numbers of media files are deposited and used within the Wikimedia projects but my experience is that when you seek an image, it is really hard. The category system is hard to navigate, there are no labels attached to images that help finding relevant content and it is English only. Finding something among 32,289,013 files is really hard. For now I have given up on Commons.

Being critical of Wikipedia is frowned upon. A typical response is "so fix it" but when solutions are offered that improve its quality, typically a suggestion falls on deaf ears. It is easy enough to improve the functionality of red links, but this idea is probably to mundane to consider even though it has been proven to be easy to implement.

People fault me for being blunt. To some extend it is part of the culture I grew up in; to some extend it is because I have lost faith in the "community". My experience is that there is too much group think and I am definitely not a member of the pack, I prefer to make up my own mind, I articulate my opinions and arguments and care not too much when people react negatively without considering the arguments.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikipedia - Wikipedian of the year Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight

Every year at Wikimania, a "Wikipedian of the year" is selected. This year there were two. Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight is one of them.

From the Wikipedia article it is not so clear why Rosie was selected for this honour. At best it is a stub and it needs a lot of work before it becomes clear why Rosie is notable. The article is a one liner with a lot of "external links".

Rosie was the one person missing as an award winner so it was easy enough to remedy this. It is now just for anyone to do a better job for Rosie both on Wikipedia and Wikidata.
Thanks,
     GerardM

One world is where #Wikimedia is weak

#Wikimania, the annual conference of the Wikimedia Foundation, brings people from all over the world together. It instills some needed cohesion in a community that is from around the world. It brings together hackers, editors, language buffs.

In its infinite wisdom the WMF has decided that Wikimania is to be bi-annual. The notion is that "local" conferences may be held every other year. To be honest, what I fail to understand what this will bring. It is obvious that global cooperation will suffer. The only thing I see is that it may reduce some costs.

One third of only 82 respondents pointed to the unique value of Wikimania. Given the size of the population interviewed I doubt the reliability of the findings. I am not one to readily dismiss what the WMF has to say but in this the WMF fails its mission.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikimedia - the quality of access to the sum of all human knowledge

Again, a big flare up of "we the community" demand this and that. Again what Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation is about is conveniently forgotten. At Wikimania there was a really interesting presentation by Raph Koster author of a "Theory of Fun for Game Design". Well recommended once it is available for viewing..

An abstraction of the current huha is in there and this community is described as the monsters who rule it all (my words, his pictures). These people who impose their world on others have forgotten what the game is about. It is about providing access to the sum of all knowledge. From that perspective their issues with the multimedia viewer are hardly significant compared with the increased ease for people who just access the parts of human knowledge we do give access to.

My pet example of "the community" not caring about providing access to our available knowledge is in the decision that easy and obvious access to fonts adds clutter to the user interface and is therefore not acceptable... About seven percent of a population is dyslexic and it is extremely hard to find and enable the OpenDyslexic font. It took a MediaWiki developer over two minutes and he enabled it in a way I did not know existed... He knew it existed, he knew the name of the font. This demonstrates how relevant seven percent of our reader population to our community is.

Should we primarily care about access or is it a playground for monsters?
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - It ain't got a thing

A rose, a rose, is a rose by any other name as beautiful.. Eh actually people are quite smart and know a rose when they see one. Machines need to be told what is a rose.

Wikidata has this requirement of being usable by machines. So we need to know what thing a thing is and for all humans it needs to be stated that all of them are considered human.

Several high powered people at Wikimania expressed the opinion that for Wikidata to get in full swing, we have to identify every thing.

I have identified a few hundred "list articles". Items that start with "List of " or "Member of " for instance. I have identified a lot of "group of people" who were supposed to be born in the XXth century.

At Wikidata a thing is bad. We cannot safely select it, we cannot auto describe it. We should get rid of every thing.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - Dear Lila, it is all about the application

Three months in the job, Lila did an analysis of where we are with our projects. The way she brought it was very much traditional; Wikipedia and English Wikipedia at that. The challenges were not that traditional; much of the public will be mobile and they will not be where they are today.

Another requirement is that all the new people need to be able to contribute. Removing the existing road blocks is absolutely necessary..

When people are to contribute, they have to have a reason to contribute. They will need to benefit from the effort. This year Commons will be wikidatafied and it will become possible to search in multiple languages. The Amnesty International community may add the people on their watch list to Wikidata. In this way what we do in Wikidata gets more of an application.

When we start thinking in terms of how people will be able to use the data we have in store for them, we will find more contributors. Their data will become better connected. The value of our data will increase and we will realise the aspiration of more people in more countries being involved in what we do. We will not only share in the sum of our available information they will put it to use for us.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikimania - Mr Salil Shetty, #Amnesty International

Mr Shetty spoke at Wikimania 2014. He explained how much Amnesty International and the Wikimedia Foundation have in common. He did a good job and many of the people at the conference proved to have been involved with campaigns of Amnesty in the past. One of the things it does is ask for international attention for people who are in trouble, they are often in jail, they have been tortured and, as the record shows attention helps.

What we could do at Wikidata is decide that all the people who need attention for reasons valid to Amnesty International are notable enough to have an item. We would have all the notable information about these people, this include their profession and the fact that AI considers them at risk and links to more information for instance at the website of AI. This provides the basic information when people decide that there are too many reasons to write a Wikipedia article.

All too often the tipping point for writing an article is the death of a person on a list like this. My hope is that there will be few of these occasions when an article gets actually written.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikimania - a visa denied

Meeting Amir at a conference, a hackathon is a pleasure. Having him around is a sure way of getting all kinds of problems solved. Giving his intimate expertise of pywikibot and our projects he makes it seem easy to resolve issues. The biggest issue is often that it takes time for his bots to complete.

Amir has been to many conferences but we will have to miss him in London.. It took the British embassy several weeks and all kinds of excuses why it took so long to decide that they are afraid that he will not go back.

Really?

The success of Wikimania 2014 will not be as great because one of our best and brightest will not be among us.
Thanks,
       GerardM

The #Chinese #Wikipedia is not only #Simplified

#Wikimania 2013 has come and gone. China and the Chinese Wikimedia projects have had their day under the sun. The statistics show the Chinese Wikipedia is doing exceedingly well; it is growing 62% annually at the moment.

What we know as the Chinese language is defined by what is written because there are multiple languages that use the same script. To make it even more complicated this written language exists in two scripts: the traditional and the simplified script.

The Chinese Wikipedia can be read in both the simplified and the traditional script. The default script is the simplified script and for those who want it, there is an option for readers to choose for the traditional script.

I wonder what Google finds when its bots crawl the Chinese Wikipedia. They will obviously find the simplified content, but do they find the same content in the traditional script? When Google cannot find the content in the traditional script, people will not find information in Wikipedia when they google for information.

It is probably easy to find the answer to this question when you know Chinese. Please let me know :)
Thanks,
       GerardM

Think globally, act locally

Dedalus or Ad Huikeshoven is a Dutch Wikimedian and accountant. He has been a member of the audit committee for quite some time. It is therefore of interest what he has to say of the annual fundraiser.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The Wikimedia Foundation is a global organisation with a global mission and a global vision. Every year a lot of money is collected to financially support its organizational and technical infrastructure. The foundation and the chapters maintain a track record of raising funds on time and on budget, and every year for bigger dollar amounts. Changes in the design and banner and donation landing pages follow evidence based research findings for best effect.

A dozen local chapters of the Wikimedia Foundation participate in the online fundraiser. Chapter participation is part of the success of the last fund-raisers. Growth in dollar amount collected was partly a result of an increase in chapter participation.

All Wikimedians should be thankful to the many volunteers around the globe who have devoted time and energy to get a chapter organized. Institutionalizing a legal entity requires a lot of tough work. I am very glad fellow Wikimedians are willing to go through these motions. Eventually it pays of.

At Wikimania this year quite a lot of people were heavily upset by a letter and resolution from the board of the Wikimedia Foundation about the fundraiser. I happen to serve as a community member on a board committee, that is, the Audit Committee. The scope of its audits is the Wikimedia Foundation itself, not the chapters per se. My position is that I would love to see all local chapters participating in the annual online fundraiser or working towards participating in the future.

The Wikimedia movement as a whole has a responsibility to ensure accountability to donors about money received through the online fundraiser and the way that money is spent. Providing a link to the latest financial statement on [[m:Reports]] is a transparent way for a chapter to show they have fulfilled their accountability responsibilities toward donors. A September 1 deadline has been set for chapters to show financial reporting compliance for this year.

You can find links to recent financial statements for ten chapters that participated in the last fundraiser on [[m:Reports]]. The score so far is eleven out of twelve. Eleven down, one to go. Ok, have I mentioned Wikimania yet? Let me tell you this: I really enjoyed Wikimania this year (my first Wikimania ever). And I really would like to thank the local team from WMIL for organizing such a great event for the global movement as a whole. So, they have been very busy. In my humble opinion they should be forgiven that this year their financial report is late.
---Ad

PS just after I submitted this blog post there was this. Keeping my fingers crossed for the last financial report...

#Wikimania recordings find their way on #Youtube

Reasons to be cheerful; Wikimania recordings are finding their way on to the Internet. This time I can be happy that I spend so much time networking and not going to all the presentations. I will still be able to see them, to comment and ask questions.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Addendum: His slides can be found here.

Amazing Stroopwafels

A #Wikimania traditions are the stroopwafels. They are a Dutch sweet, they have been brought in over abundance to Wikimanias and you are supposed to like them. I like stroopwafels, particularly the Amazing Stroopwafels. They were a daily attraction when I lived in Rotterdam. Enjoy,
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikimania was great, WikiIndia is in November

Wikimania was great. It was awesome, great organisation, great ambiance, great people to meet. It has come and gone and now I am really looking forward to the presentations I have missed. All in all I was impressed; a big thank you to all the people whose hard work made it the success it was.

In November there will be another important Wiki conference. Wiki Conference India will be three days packed with all things relevant to India, the Indic language Wikipedias and how to raise awareness for our projects in India.

This conference will not be a mini Wikimania in India, it will be much more centred to the languages and countries of what used to be the British Raj. One reason is that countries like Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar very much face the same issues. It is hoped that this conference will help them as much as any of the Wikimedians in India proper.

At this time there a "request for papers" has gone out. It means that we like to hear from people who want to present at the Wiki Conference India. :)  Talks about how to improve facts about India on the English Wikipedia will certainly be considered. :)
Thanks,
        GerardM