Professor Commandeur goes to Kenia - A "Wikifind" perspective

At the celebration of 25 years nl.wikipedia.org there was a game and the objective was to meet and greet fellow Wikipedians and learn about their claim to fame. I am grateful that I went as I met so many wonderful people that I had not been in contact with for many years.

Monica approached me and as we got acquainted, I learned that she was a professor of the Wageningen University. I expected that she was known to Wikidata, I was surprised by the negative, I attributed two papers to a newly minted Wikidata identifier, took a picture and added it to Commons and hey presto there was a start of a Scholia for Monica A.M. Commandeur.

We talked about "vermiculture", about African worms (they have appendages), a trip to Kenya, about ORCiD (her identifier was not public) and about Youtube. 

• Wikidata did not know about vermiculture it was thought to be the same as vermicompost .. and then I find an item without an English label :)
• African worms and their feet? Google is not my friend
• Monica will travel to Kenya, we discussed why ORCiD is important; it resulted in her opening up her ORCiD identifier :)
• The registration on YouTube of a seminar has been made public.. now for me to find them :|

In a previous post I proposed a new Wikimedia project, WikiFind. With a little effort professor Commandeur has expandeded the presence for her work. When organisations like ORCiD, WMF, CrossRef .. name them all collaborate on making freely available information findable, we would do so much better in sharing the sum of all the knowledge available to us.

Thanks,

      GerardM

Retracted and outdated sources from a Wikimedia perspective

A recent article related to the quality of Wikipedia references indicates that when a paper is retracted, the median time for a correction is 3.68 years. There is a bot for that, the RetractionBot, updated in 2024, the problem is that people have to use it AND "expecting Wikipedia editors to continuously monitor every citation for new retractions is unrealistic"...

HOWEVER

Retracted papers are hardly our only problem. Information is often superseded in later publications. This does not mean that earlier works are retracted it means that the information our articles are based on is stale. There is no bot for that AND expecting Wikipedia editors to continuously monitoring for new information is unrealistic...

ALSO

As our existing content needs maintenance, our public is diminishing and all our communities of volunteer contributors have their own objectives we have a problem; what to do?

Why not flip the script, why not provide a search engine that includes all our references, our articles and items. We enrich it with information from Retraction Watch, Crossref, ORCiD and obviously the Internet Archive. As the new "WikiFind" community adds new information items, it links them to articles and items and builds a field with potential new references. 

The objective of the "WikiFind" search engine is to be informative and provide a structure that brings our projects together AND present all of this to a new public. The implementation should be similar to how we started Commons; at the time Erik Möller started a new Wiki and only later did it serve images to Wikipedia articles... Maybe a challenge this time.

Thanks,

      GerardM

Ziyad Al-Aly, clinical epidemiologist from a Wikimedia perspective

 Ars Technica featured an article "Heart protection from COVID shots remains amid updates, study finds".  The article refers to multiple studies and mentions Ziyad Al-Aly, one of the authors of several of the studies. 

When you consider Dr Al-Aly as a Wikimedia consumer, then his Scholia produces the most entries into the Wikimedia rabbit hole like publications, co-authors and topics. Drilling down, a

Wikipedia article informs about his education and awards.

As a Wikimedia contributor, there is so much that can be done: attributing articles, adding missing articles thanks to the ORCiD-scraper, adding co-authors to papers.. And then there is the deep dive, adding for instance the awards known to the Wikipedia for instance.

Now for the Wikimedia perspective; it is losing its audience. Without an audience what motivates people to contribute? Without contributors, who maintains our content? Its main perspective for the future should be: how will we reach a public for the sum of all the knowledge we have on offer.

The essence of all that knowledge is in known references. The Ars Technica article could obviously serve as a reference for Wikimedia content. When the Wikimedia Foundation were to offer references and sources in a search engine, traditional Wikimedia content is available for a deep dive. When these sources are associated with topics that have a Wikipedia article, it also serves as a tool to update these articles.

A WMF search engine based on sources and references is not commercial, would provide a distinct service and will entice renewed interest in its projects.

Thanks,

       GerardM

About screw worms and the plague, with a Wikimedia angle

Screw worms and the plague are indigenous to the USA. When left untreated they are deadly. They appear regularly as key in the Youtubes the algorithm presents me. Consequently I often add data on Wikidata.

Recently I did some work on Kenneth L. Gage. He is/was with the CDC. Given the amount of papers to his name, he has/had a distinguished career. Mr Cage has/had many co-authors. Many of them work/worked at the CDC. They are the ones who protect/protected the USA against the plague.

At Wikidata we know about Mr Gage, his papers, his expertise. We could know about his career at the CDC and the careers of his co-authors. Given that these are facts that you do not easily find anywhere else it easily gives the WMF a platform with established facts, not necessarily neutral from a political point of view but verifiably true. 

With a platform where Youtubes get connected to Wikimedia sources we could provide information that the USA press no longer offers. They are bought and verifiably no longer bring the news, all the news.

Thanks,

      GerardM

Watching informative Youtubes with a Wikimedia twist

When I go to work, I typically listen to youtubes like this one on the train. The narrative is typically much better than the visuals; not looking gives me room to edit Wikidata at the same time.

I found this youtube because I searched for "trophic rewilding" and it suggests that the introduction of jaguars in Yellowstone may bring equivalent changes to Yellowstone of what Wolves famously did. Suggests, because there is no proof that jaguars have actually been introduced. 

However, there are scientific papers on the subject; eg this DOI. It was included in Wikidata in 2021 and,  a lot of additional information is missing that can be added. Adding co-authors or citations is easy and the best bit; the Scholia for this paper gets automagically updated.

What I would like is an environment to link "youtubes" to information from the Wikimedia ecosystem. With links to a Wikipedia article and a Scholia to the subject, links to other subjects mentioned or scientists mentioned. Also links to what Commons has to offer.

As such an environment will expand when "youtubes" are added, it may also be the place where the issues are presented about the quality of the information provided. It should be useful and it may generate its own public.

Thanks,

       GerardM

What is the utility of Wikimedia projects as seen by its editors

I participated in a survey for Wikimedia contributors. The survey was first and foremost about traditional Wikipedia and honestly, there is not much value in my replies.

Over the years I have contributed a lot to many projects. My efforts have to have a purpose otherwise I lose my motivation. It has to have utility, it is what I dream about, it is what I strive for.

Would it not be great when we knew what our community dreams about, what they aim to achieve and as importantly how these dreams might grow into a reality or have grown into realities. Would it not be great when the Wikimedia Foundation builds on what is already there and grows our public, our relevance? It could start with a survey.

Thanks,

       GerardM

MSF, drones, a hospital and what is not in the news - also NOMA

You may know MSF as Doctors without borders. They are not beholden to the whims of politicians. They provide emergency medical care in too many countries, in countries ravaged by war like Palestina, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan.. 

On 2 April 2026, a drone attack struck the Al-Jabalain hospital in White Nile state, Sudan. Seven medical staff were killed. It is shocking and at the time I predicted that it would not be covered in the news. It did not. 

What to do? I read the MSF website and learned about a disease called Noma. In 2023 noma was added to the World Health Organization's list of neglected tropical diseases. I am in the process of deepening the information about Noma in Wikidata. It involves tagging papers with "noma", attributing papers to people. Finding new papers and adding them as well. For a recent "systematic scoping review" I am adding all the citations, adding many more papers relevant to the subject. It results in an informative Scholia on the subject. 

When the news is this bad, doing something positive is a way to cope.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Stamps, a Dutch charity and some science

The Dutch charity "Stichting Koninklijke Kinderpostzegels Nederland"  is best known for the annual sale of "kinderpostzegels". These stamps are sold door to door by primary school children since 1948 when a primary school teacher came up with the idea. It is now considered to be part of the Dutch cultural heritage.

Fast forward to 2026, this charity is probably the best known charity in the Netherlands, it supports disadvantaged children and this year it focuses on loneliness. Loneliness is closely linked to suicide. The numbers for suicide are not pretty; suicide is rising year over year. There is less funding for care so what to do?

The charity commissioned research on how to prevent loneliness. It is truly scientific, done by a reputable organisation, reputable scientists, and as can be expected with plenty of citations. The paper is in Dutch but hey, is Google not your friend?

For this Dutch paper there is a Scholia. Effectively it provides an interactive view, when citations are added, the view will change because of an added cited work, a cited author. When papers are attributed to an author and multiple works happen to be cited, the Scholia evolves and the author is credited for all the papers cited. 

For an NGO this is quite powerful because papers like these underpin the value of their work. It  provides a strong argument to support its work and contribute as a donor or volunteer.

Thanks,

         GerardM

What is good for the goose is good for the gander

The English Wikipedia banned a source used to prove the veracity of statements made in articles. That is in itself not a problem, the problem is that it had been a source that provided proof that could not be substantiated in any other way. 

The problem was with a feud with parties outside of the own organisation.They were threatened, abused.What clinched the argument for the ban was that they changed the narrative by altering the content they provided.

The organisation banned was not the Trump government of the United States of America.

Thanks,

     GerardM

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

Reliable sources for Wikimedia in the time of Minnesota in Winter

There are government engineered riots in the streets of Minnesota, people are dying. The sources for what transpires; the traditional sources of repute are suspect. Government sources deliberately polish what transpires to the extend that its lies are obvious given video documentation showing proof of the opposite. News cooperations operate on the basis of "balanced reporting" consequently obvious falsehoods get equal attention invalidating reliability for these traditional sources.

The best that can be said about USA government publications is that it publishes its policy however it no longer provides us with a reliable source. It no longer has the organisations that had a quality making their publications qualify as reliable. Examples abound; think health, climate, traffic, trade, military.

Wikimedia serves a global public. Arguably foreign sources became more reliable and respectable, more likely to provide a narrative that clashes with what some in the USA expect to hear. 

The Wikimedia Foundation is an organisation based in the United States, its infrastructure is centred in the USA. I fear for for the continuity of its products and its quality. It is not a given that this will remain given a US government going to court with the BBC because of what it considers partisan reporting. Wikimedia aims to provide a neutral point of view but given that its traditional sources are increasingly suspect, that it operates in an environment that is no longer free. Given that its bias is also in what it does not cover, I wonder how we measure Wikipedia as a reliable source.

Thanks,

       GerardM

A national project for Nigeria using Wikimedia projects

Nigeria will be going to the polls. There are over 520 languages in Nigeria and for some of them there is a Wikipedia. It is expected that there will be a lot of fake news. Wikipedia is known for its curated information so with a successful multilingual Wikimedia project there is the potential to undo or prevent a lot of damage.

When all the relevant information is to be offered in many languages big and small, there is a need for a scaffolding for the information. on all the parties, all the candidates and all the other entities that may be of relevance.

Wikidata can provide this scaffolding. For the existing members of parliament there is likely an existing item. All the candidates are included in Wikidata and identified as a candidate for the 2027 elections. Assuming that there is a project page for all the language Wikipedias relevant for Nigeria, there will be a Listeria list with all the candidates, the candidates with and without a local article are identified as such. 

Another list could include all the fake news recognised by the project and the parties, organisations, parties involved.

Technically, there are a few things that will make live easier. 

• a template that includes the query for Listeria lists - one , , the Wikidata identifier the query is for.
• all participating projects enable the Listeriabot for its processing
• a trigger that will update a Listeria list wherever it exist 

Thanks,

    PS happy 25th

          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

Maintaining information on African politicians

There are many Wikipedias in many languages with an African public. They all have their own public and we want to share the sum of all knowledge with them all of them. Maintaining complete information on all the major African politicians on all these Wikipedias in text based articles is not realistic.

On many projects there are links for African politicians and when the Listeria bot is active. It will update the links whenever there is an update and it will perform this update on any Wikipedia that shares these links. For someone like Mr Bola Ahmed Tinubu it is likely that there will be an article and it will be show in the list. For someone like Mr Osagie Ehanire this is less likely and it will show a link to Wikidata.

In a personal project there are many national politicians for African countries.. The idea is that when something changes, it is reflected in the Listeria list on all the participating Wikipedias.. Recently I have done some work on Nigerian politicians, later office holders and some new Listeria lists. The new lists have to be added on other Wikipedias for them to share the latest data. 

New national elections will be held in Nigeria in November .. There will be many new people who will be a candidate and compete with incumbent politicians. They all belong to parties, they studied, some may already be known to Wikidata. They may make claims about their education, their background and yes, all these claims can be verified and find a place at Wikidata. For both claims that can and cannot be substantiated there is room if only to support a public that is to make a choice.

Thanks,

       GerardM

My three anwers for the questions of Bernadette Meehan

Mrs Meehan will be the next Chief Executive Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. In her personal presentation she indicates what her questions will be to learn about our organisation:

* What brought you to this movement?

* How do we stay relevant over the next 25 years?

* What three Wiki resources should I read first?

* I read about Wikipedia on the website of Byte magazine. It sounded interesting and it was.

** This is where I have opinions

*** This is where I know that others will make better recommendations

I am certain that we will retain relevance. How that relevance will evolve has dimensions.

• we remain independent and thanks to our contributor communities our trust model remains in tact
• our relevance for AI training is likely to decrease because of our current inability to harness the knowledge we have and ensure validity
• when we improve the validity and consistency of our data, we will be better able to retain our English language public the main difference will be in the growth of the public for other languages

The most relevant factor will be the transformation of our community and its practices. Will it evolve so that one community will know what to trust from other communities. Will communities find ways to facilitate other communities. Will we trust other organisations and trust their qualities in order to partner and provide the best information possible?

Many Wikimedians have strong opinions declaring their objections as insurmountably. The problem is that even when they have a point they do not consider the value of what they reject. Typically what is rejected is the overall effect on completeness and fidelity for our public. One easy win is when all references with a DOI are all known at Wikidata. It provides a basis necessary for a check for retractions and for later publications citing our reference. Quality information evolves and we can and should have a tool that enables such considerations.

PS Is America still the best place for our movement given its shortcomings as a functional judicial system?

Thanks,

      GerardM

Today's laurels are tomorrow's compost

There is a congratulatory article because "in the AI era, Wikipedia has never been more valuable". That may be however, it is valuable now but will this remain the same? So probably one Wikipedia is mined for information to be used by an AI. The information contained in this Wikipedia will evolve over time and this information may consequently end up in the results of the involved AI.

The question becomes, how will we remain relevant and up to date. Relevancy is in multiple parts, how do we remain a challenge for our editor community, how do we remain the "go to" place for our public and how do we remain a source for the bots feeding the AI.

My suggestion is predictable. Leverage the sum of all the knowledge we have in all our projects and maximise cooperation with any and all compatible organisations.

We can share all the awards and recipients of awards known on our projects. Our academic references should all be known to Wikidata and we could and should update these in collaboration with ORCiD and CrossRef. We would have up to date portfolio for the scientists we have Wikipedia articles of. We would know for scientific articles their citations and what cited these articles. Our editors would be enabled to improve the quality of our work. 

Yes, the AI engines would be better informed but hey, our intention is to share the sum of our knowledge. They are welcome to it.

Thanks,

      GerardM

Missing award recipients in both Wikidata and the Wikipedias

Professor Fei-Fei Li is one of the recipients of the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. It says so on the English Wikipedia and it is confirmed on the website of the prize.

There are nine Wikipedias with an article for the award and there is Wikidata. When the 2025 awardees are known on a Wikipedia, "2025" should be available in the text of the article. Otherwise the article is likely out of date. The recipients should be known on Wikidata AND there should be an "award received" for the award with a date of 2025.

When you check Wikidata for this award using "Reasonator", you will find that Wikidata is in need of an update. It is by accident that I learned of this award. Updates are an hit or miss affair, this would be improved when a bot produces a list of all the awards that are in need of updates. When a bot produces this list for every Wikipedia for all the known awards, it enables people to do this maintenance work. 

Obviously 2025 is this year and it will have the most mutations. A similar job can be run for other years but it is less likely to bring many additions, more likely these list will become reduced in size over time.

Thanks,

      GerardM

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

Automated updates for Wikimedia projects

 

I revisited my Wikipedia user page. On it I have several subpages that are regularly automatically updated when things change on Wikidata. One of them is about the "Prix Roger Nimier", I had not looked at it for years. I updated Wikidata from the data on the French Wikipedia and to make it interesting, I added the Listeria template to my French Wikipedia user page. It updated and the English and French article are nearly identical. The difference is in the description.

There are many personal project pages that are automatically updated from Wikidata. The point that I wanted to make: topics are not universally maintained. As I had another look after a few years, I found that many have had regular updates. The quality however is not that great. From a Wikimedia perspective, it seems that we have not one audience but many. When we allow for automatic updates, we will be able to share the sum of all our knowledge with a much bigger audience.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Providing Resources for a subject used in a Wikimedia project

So you want to write an article in a Wikimedia Project. It may be new to your project but it is likely part of the sum of all Wikimedia knowledge. Lets consider a workflow that acknowledges this reality.

An article typically starts with a title and it may be linked to an existing item in Wikidata. If so, the item, the concept is linked to a workflow. All the references for all articles are gathered. All relations known at Wikidata are presented. Based on what kind of item it is, tools are identified presenting information in the concept articles. They are categories and info boxes. References for content in the info boxes are included as well.

Another workflow is for existing articles. All references and relations expressed in the article show as green, unused references and relations show as orange. Missing categories and values in info boxes are presented and the author may click to include them in the article. Values in info boxes may show black, red or blue it will be whatever the author chooses.

The workflow is enabled once the concept or the article is linked to Wikidata. So for those Wikipedians who do not want to change, they just do not make use of this workflow and are left unbothered. There will be harvesting processes based on the recent changes on all projects; a change will trigger processes that may look for vandalism for new relations and for suggestions for new labels. 

The most important beneficiary will be our audience. This workflow makes the sum of all our knowledge actionable to improve articles, populate articles and reflect what we know in all our articles. Our editors have the choice to use this tool or not. Obviously their edits will be harvested and evaluated in a more broad context; all of the Wikimedia projects. The smaller projects where more new articles are created will have an easy time adding info boxes and references. The bigger projects will find the relations that are not or not sufficiently expressed with references. 

Providing subject resources will work only when it is supported on a Foundation scale. It is not that volunteers cannot build a prototype, it is the need for scalability and sustained performance that is not provided by the Toolforge.

Thanks,

      GerardM