#Wikidata - Six degrees - Edmund Bacon

Edmund Bacon has two sons known to Wikidata; Kevin and Michael. By adding information to the father, fewer steps will remain between Kevin Bacon and many other items. To add information I read the article and was able to add one school and two awards.

One of these awards, the Frank P. Brown Medal was awarded to several truly great architects. I am sure there is an easy connection between some of them and Rem Koolhaas. Mr Koolhaas was the architect to the City Center of Almere where I live :)

In the mean time, Popcorndude rose to the challenge and came up with the first routine to calculate how many degrees of separation exist between any Wikidata item and Kevin Bacon. His answer for Julius Caesar is 5.

I applaud the effort, the challenge now is to make this functionality available to ordinary people like me. I want to run this routine and see how I can improve connections. After all, the six degrees of separation has it that there are no more than six.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - six degrees of separation of Kevin Bacon

There is this famous game where everyone is said to be no more than six steps away from Kevin Bacon. There is even an article about it.

It struck me that it would be nice to know how far away any Wikidata item is from Mr Bacon. The original game is about other actors and makes use of the IMDb but there is no reason not to use Wikidata. One reason to use Wikidata is to see how the shortest paths to Mr Bacon can be optimised.

One obvious way is to document everything there is to know about Mr Bacon.. like that he had a father. It opens up the world of architecture to Mr Bacon..

Adding information is one thing, it takes boffins to come up with a routine that finds the shortest path. I am sure they are competent, for them it may only be a matter of being challenged.. The great thing is that the combination of adding relations and boffins will make for many challenges, for instance how to link Mr Bacon to Genghis Khan or Julius Caesar with the shortest path.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikidata - The Princess of Asturias Awards III

As I mentioned before, the Princess of Asturias Award used to be called differently.  It has awards in different areas and as you can see in the illustration, the change in names has had its effect in some but not in other parts.

It is easy to understand why issues like this arise. Most people or organisations received the "prince of Asturias award" so it is utterly confusing why it can no longer be shown. On the other hand the award is now called the "princess of Asturias award" and it makes sense to make that name change.

Anyway, it is a flaw in Wikidata that this cannot be properly addressed.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - a #banana is a #fruit

I read that Alan Bond died. He was quite famous for many reasons. He was a businessman that got caught and it is why the Wikidata description reduces him to "Australian fraudster".

It reminded me of the critique for a particular fruit to be called a fruit. This was done by using automated descriptions. The one thing forgotten in this critique is that a banana is therefore a fruit in any language. Mr Bond is only an Australian fraudster according to a text that is only there in English. Wikidata does not corroborate it. It does not mention the other things he achieved. It did not even mention that he was married..

Ah well, what to say. I am sure that when Mr Bond was still alive he would laugh wryly.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikidata - The Princess of Asturias Awards II

Stephen Hawking received many awards. Given that Wikidata registers such things, it is no wonder given Mr Hawking's prominence that some 27 have been registered.for him.

One of them was the "Princess of Asturias Awards". It is however a grouping of awards not a single one. Mr Hawking received the "Princess of Asturias Award - concord" award. I did add this award to the item for Mr Hawking and I removed the grouping.

Some people disagreed because, the old statement was sourced. It did not matter that it was wrong, the only thing that mattered that it was sourced. Funnily enough it was pointed out to me that the source was right; it said that Mr Hawking received the concord award. It was just Wikidata that was wrong..

So I wonder what the value of a source statement is. It is apparently OK to indicate on Wikidata what it does NOT say on the source.  It is so confusing.. I am sure that when Mr Hawking hears about this he will just smile.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - the #Pope is no longer of the Roman Catholic faith?

When you are to believe some at Wikidata, the religion of pope Francis, the bishop of Rome is no longer "Roman Catholic". The argument is a beautiful one.. "Catholicism" is a religion and "Roman Catholic Church" is an institution... WOW..

It is as if all the differences in all the churches in Catholicism have been removed in one big gesture, it is as if ecumenism is finally happening because Wikidata says so..

Wikidata is immature and it can be noticed in squabbles like this. It is also a consequence of people who have no understanding of the subject matter imposing their views and talking exhaustively about the subject.

Well they are wrong. I am sure when pope Francis hears about this he will just smile.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikidata - what to do next

I stopped documenting recent deaths in Wikidata. I find I have withdrawal symptoms. It is the kind of work that is satisfying because you see the number of deaths in 2015 ever increasing. It is a challenge to keep up. The list that I used has grown by some 200.

I hope that the English Wikipedians who used to maintain their templates chose to step in to fill the void.

No, I will not tell my wife that I have more time to clean the house. I love Wikidata too much. However, I will do other things. Things were intervention makes a difference. It is great to have the tooling that Magnus created over time. For me it is the difference between doing something in a sane way and poking in the dark.

If there is one thing  many in the Wikidata community do not get it is that the time of volunteers is not cherished. There is no support nor understanding of the issues that exist. It is really ivory towery oh, oh, oh, the data is not good enough ... Let's move on and wait for the latest and greatest to magically appear. The "paper cuts" do not happen except for the hurt. There is no support for maintenance of the data and consequently the dead of 2015 are the least of our concern.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - The Princess of Asturias Awards

When improving quality is the name of the game, the Princess of Asturias Awards has several opportunities to have fun.

Like many other awards it is not singular in its scope. Many Wikipedias have articles for each category. Arguably the award is not the "Princess of Asturias Award" as some Wikipedias have it.

When the award was conceived, it was named after the prince who was next in line to become king of Spain. The Prince became king and he will be most likely be succeeded by a princess. It is why the name was changed. Wikidata is not smart enough to know that such name changes take place, It is why basic information like a name can be utterly confusing.

When you add information for this award, there is all the information added in good faith on the award itself. It is redundant but removing them means that the link to Wikipedia articles are lost.

Tough. Such links are what people expect of Wikidata..
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikipedia - its tyranny of sources

Let us keep it simple; a credible source is a source that that provides good information. There are several aspects to it.

• accurate
• unbiased
• timely
• complete

A lot of research went into "proving" that Wikipedia is a credible source. Typically this was done by subject matter experts that examined a subset of articles. Usually a lot of "sources" coincided with credibility. 

The point was made repeatedly, Wikipedia is credible for its intended use.

Proving that Wikidata provides good information is different. It is incomplete; a lot of information is just not there. Twenty percent of its items provide no information. When sources are cited, it is Wikipedia that is referred to. Data like deaths in 2015 is no longer maintained. The pope, the bishop of Rome, has no longer the "Roman Catholic Church" as his faith.

Wikidata is immature and that is ok.

The approach to sources for Wikidata is tyrannical. It imposes sources for each statement and the suggestion is that this will make it credible. When you consider the sheer number of statements and the speed at which they increase it is impossible to see how that will work. It is well understood that having a source for a "fact" is one way to perpetuate a lie.

There is a better approach to proving Wikidata as a credible source. This is done in the same way as it was suggested that Wikipedia was credible; by comparing it to others like Brockhaus and Encyclopaedia Britannica. Much of the ground work is already there. We can compare to VIAF, to the GND. The point of this would not be that all our data is the same but that we care about quality and share the differences and research those. 

While we make our data as accurate as we can, we can continue to work on making our data complete. Any credible source including Wikipedia and by inference DBpedia qualifies. They qualify because they help us complete our data and do this in a timely way.

This process of adding data is iterative. We add, we check and research the differences. 

Every argument why we cannot do this or should wait denies Wikidata its credibility and worse the call to wait till the latest and greatest gadget comes online demotivates. The Wikipedia approach to sources is great for Wikipedia it just does not work for Wikidata.

Thanks,

      GerardM

#Wikidata - Albert West died

A friend of mine mentioned that Albert West died. He mentioned it because his death would be listed on the list of Dutch people who died in 2015.  As this list is on my watch list, I checked to see if he was on it. He was not.

Nobody had bothered to add his death yet.

I have done a decent job on Mr West, I added some additional information and the fact that he died. He will be on the list the next time when the list is updated.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#English #Wikipedia and those who died in #2015

It is wonderful news and I am grateful that the English Wikipedia decided to use Wikidata in stead of its own templates. It is wonderful, they have realised that the good people at Wikidata maintain that data..

I did it with pleasure, and I am thrilled to learn that the data is of high quality and up to date. I made it so because copying dates from English into Wikidata is easiest and therefore I always did them first the past two years.

The move of the English Wikipedia to use Wikidata data has been used as an excuse NOT to use the data harvested by DBpedia. That argument is wrong for three reasons.

• they update information in real time by harvesting from the RSS feed.
• they do this not only for the English Wikipedia
• they do not rely on a poor sod who adds info by hand

PLEASE, make use of the DBpedia data and please do consider the DBpedia people as part of our world. Let us learn from what they learned and make use of what they so gladly want to share with us. Share with us on our terms, share with us using our license.

Thanks,

       GerardM

#Wikidata - Jurandyr Noronha died in 2015

Mr Noranha died on 2015-05-10. Mr Noranha was active in the movie industry so he is known in the IMDB database.

People die all the time but with the list functionality Jura1 created a page for "Brazilian people who died in 2015" dead Brazilians have an added significance. Mr Noranha qualifies..

At issue is that while Mr Noranha is known to Wikidata, it still takes a person to make a manual statement about his final day. I have done that for a year but I find that I am falling more and more behind. I do not even make a statement for Mr Noranha to be a Brazilian.

One thing that is not motivating is that I KNOW that this information is there for Wikidata to be had. The wonderful people at DBpedia really want to share this with Wikidata. Not much happens and as it ism my enthusiasm is wavering and my precious free time that is in demand for other things as well..

So what to do..
Thanks.
      GerardM

#Wikidata - Jos Panhuijsen a #Dutch #author

Mr Panhuijsen is a celebrated author; he received the F. Bordewijk Prize in 1959.There is no article for him on any Wikipedia and to be honest, I do not care that is not my game. It is for someone else to do.

Adding Mr Panhuijsen to Wikidata however is something that I do care about. He is one of three missing authors that received the Bordewijk Prize and now he does show on the Reasonator page in the timeline and as one in a list of sixty recipients.

Adding Mr Panhuijsen, van Beek and Simhoffer makes as much sense as having red links in Wikipedia. Even more so because they will show in any and all Wikipedia when used with the magnificent list tool created by Magnus.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - #awards on #Wikipedia

One argument why not to have lists of awards based on #Wikidata is #dead. The list can include the date it was conferred and, it can be sorted in this way. I asked Magnus how to do this and he showed me..

Yes, there may be all kinds of arguments why it is still not perfect. But things never are. What is relevant is that quality information may show in any Wikipedia. It does not rely on the existence of articles in that language but its information is as good as Wikidata has it.

When there are champions for specific topics like literature, it helps them when they learn that an award has been awarded again or that an article does not exist yet for an author that has been recognised with an award.

Lists are powerful. They provide real information and particularly in the projects where articles on a given subject are few and far between, this is an excellent way of introducing people if only by their red link.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - Awards

Awards are powerful. They recognise people or organisations for the work they have done. I noticed that the Pulitzer prizes were announced. I noticed that the Goldman Environmental Award are not well developed on Wikidata so there are always more awards and recipients to register.

We do know how often an award was registered. We also know that many recipients have not been registered. They either do not exist at all or they are not known to have received an award.

When an award is worthy of a Wikipedia article, they are worthy of proper attention. When an award is registered, it makes sense for people who have a list of the award on their watchlist to be notified.. Alternatively it is left to Wikidata to update lists of awards.

In this way we make better use of the data we hold and have a better chance of maintaining the quality of our Wikipedias.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Bangladesh - Ananta Bijoy Das

When people are lynched because they express their point of view, it is murder pure and simple. It is the denial of basic human rights. When multiple people die for the same reason, people who are all connected to the same blog, it is obvious that some organisation, some planning is behind it.

When no action is taken, it is an afront to the rule of law. It is an indication that law enforcement is not functional. The law should be applied equally and there is no opinion that has the power to lift itself above the law. In the final analysis, even the law should support what a country has acknowledged to be universal and consequently law enforcement should apply itself.

Mr Ananta Bijoy Das is only one of several bloggers lynched by a small group of people in Bangladesh. There is a Wikidata item for him. There is no Wikipedia article yet. He is as relevant as so many other people that get killed for the wrong reasons, by people with wrong attitudes.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikipedia - #Farkhunda III

Farkhunda Zahra Naderi received the N-Peace award. This award celebrates important women in Asia and the award recognises leadership for conflict prevention, resolution and peace building, and promotes the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, and related resolutions, at regional, national and community levels.

Farkhunda is one, Bimala Kadayat is another. Of the eight women who are now known and recognised as N-Peace award winners, only Farkunda has an article in any Wikipedia. It is easy to add more women and add the dates when they were celebrated for their work.

The latest list functionality by Magnus could work on any Wikipedia and important subjects that are subject to change can easily be maintained in this way.

To make it even nicer, I would always link to Reasonator pages for the people mentioned on a list like this. Wikidata is where the data is but it is not informative. I would also like to sort on the date when an award was presented. Finally, these women do not have a description in any language. It demonstrates clearly why automated descriptions are preferable; they may exist in any language and they get updated whenever more details become available.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - #Farkhunda II

There are only three people called Farkhunda. I noticed when I checked to make sure that the lady who was lynched did not have an article yet. One of them Farkhunda Zahra Naderi, is an Afghan member of parliament and, winner of the N Peace award.

Adding more Afghan members of parliament was relatively easy. Many of them were categorized as such. The N Peace award is different. Its website is interesting because it makes the claim why the people who have been recognised by the N Peace award are so relevant.

Magnus has a new functionality in lists for Wikipedia. He blogged about this and the N Peace award is what I hope to use his new functionality for.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Reasonator on #mobile

Reasonator has been for a long time the only way to get information out of Wikidata. Magnus decided to improve on it even more and for good reason; traffic from mobile phones is more and more relevant. The latest update makes Reasonator usable on a mobile.

What I like is that you can collapse sections of information so you can see only that part of the information that you care for. In the example I used the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and, I show the timeline prominently.. For the people who care about such thing, there is a winner for 2015.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata - #Farkhunda

Farkhunda is a woman who died in Afghanistan because someone said "she has burned the Koran". Some believed it and, now she is dead. The police stood by and did nothing.

In Afghanistan, the police cannot stand idly by while someone is lynched. In this line up of all the people accused of complicity you do not notice them. They wear the same clothes and they get the same respect.

They did not "serve and protect" and it is made plain to all the Afghani police officers what is expected of them.

When you search Wikidata for Farkhunda, there are now only three hits. One of them is for an Afghani politician who won a really prestigious award Wikidata does not know about yet.. There is always more to do..
Thanks,
      GerardM