#Wikidata - Debunking #controversy in #science

I really wonder what an organisation would do that hands out "one of the scientific world's most respected environmental prizes" does when one of its luminaries becomes controversial.

The Volvo Environmenta Prize was awarded to Mr Ray Hilborn in 2006. Mr Hilborn and his science has become controversial because of the conflict of interest he has with the fishing industry. Greenpeace has documented this quite publicly.

Together with Mr Hilborn, Mr Pauly and Mr Walters were awarded the Volvo Prize. They are all known for their work on fisheries. The obvious question is now whether the work of Mr Paul and Mr Walters are tainted in the same way. This is one reason why controversies like this are so important.

When a specific line of work in science has been debunked, it becomes important to undo the damage and reevaluate the work in a field. One of the more obvious ways to make this point is for the Beijer Institute to address this issue in one way or another. When the science of Mr Hilborn is unsound, it follows that his work does not point to a sustainable future and that he does not deserve the Volvo Environment Prize.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikipedia #citations - LibraryBase

The general idea is that if Wikipedia articles are to be believed, citations ensure the quality of the statements made. The quality of the sources is therefore important. When a specific publication has a problem, a problem like reproducibility or a known conflict of interest of the author or the organisation he stands for, it follows that the publication as a source becomes problematic.

The problem with sources in Wikipedia is that like all the rest they are buried in the articles. As sources are typically known in the text through templates, it becomes possible to harvest all this and put it in a database. When things get into a database it becomes possible to analyse the data and find the authors that are problematic, refer back to the articles and remedy the inherent conflict in the article.

Take Mr Ray Hilborn for instance. He is under attack for his conflict of interest by Greenpeace. Consequently his POV needs to be collaborated by independent sources and all his science is suspect. It is wonderful to harvest all the data about sources from all the Wikipedias but there is no point to it when it does not lead to something useful.

There is a lot of money going around to confuse issues and serve specific interests. When sources are available to us all, it becomes possible to mark publications for the quality that they have. When sources are not reproducible, it follows that you can not build arguments on top of those. It then becomes possible to consider basic stuff and no longer confuse a Neutral Point of View with what is patently false.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata - Kerala MLA constituencies

Kerala is one of the states of India and like all the others has its own legislative assembly. Like in Great Britain politicians are elected from constituencies. There are many as you can see on the map.

When there are elections, things change. New people become a representative, some remain a representative and others no longer have relevance in that way. At Wikidata, the current list of people who are "Member of the Kerala Legislative Assembly" is a bit of a mess. There are many items without a name in English, there are people who are only known in English and probably there are a lot of doubles. 

There are even representatives who are known to have an article on the English Wikipedia but do not (yet) have an item. This is all because of this big push to write articles on Indian representatives.

As more work is done for this big push to get the data complete, the data will become more informative. What we hope to achieve is:

• associate MLA's with constituencies
• have labels in both English and Malayalam for all of them
• merge all the possible duplicates

Obviously there is more that might be done. We could add the dates when people became a MLA. This will allow us to create queries that shows who was a MLA at what time. When all this is done for Kerala, there are 28 other Indian states and there are many other countries that could do with a little bit of TLC.

Thanks,

      GerardM

#Wikimedia - [[citation needed]]

Our articles in any #Wikipedia can be trusted when an effort has gone into providing sources. Sources or citations are very much needed because help us distinguish fact from fiction. Finding sources exposes an origin and it helps us debunk fiction. The result of this continued effort is content that can be trusted as a sincere attempt to achieve a neutral point of view.

There are very practical problems. Sources are not always easy to find and they do not exist in every language. Sources are often behind a "pay wall” making access to the body of knowledge is very much restricted. Sources, particularly sources on the web do not exist forever. The consequence is that sources are problematic and, not everybody is equally able to help us with sources for the content we have.

When we are to improve the current, unsatisfactory situation we have to address multiple problems.

• Once sources are lost we rely on the internet archive for an historic view. It has policies that allow for the removal of content and this is often the content that is controversial and removal is often intended to rewrite history. What to do?
• Access to restricted sources is provided to the privileged few who have access to libraries. The WMF has a program that enables some of our editors access to a few pay-walled sources.
• When this proves insufficient, it is great to know that  Sci-hub among others provides “illegal” access to any and all sources.

Open access to sources is very much what we as a community care for. One of our own died in the struggle for this access so I do not think we should be deferential to an industry that is despicable. We should teach people how to find sources and ignore licensing as much as possible.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikipedia / #Commons - Brigadeer General Loree K. Sutton

Mrs Sutton is psychiatrist who is a specialist on PTSD. When you read her CV, it is impressive. She no longer works for the US Army, she works for the City of New York.

When you read the article on Wikipedia, you find her picture. It is marked as Public Domain and it is not on Commons. Given that Wikidata is working towards the point where copyright and license information one can only hope that images like this can be easily shared based on the license.

When Commons started, it was intended as a repository that prevented the same file to be uploaded to all the Wikipedias. As such it served its purpose remarkably well. With Wikidata it becomes trivial to share images like the one of Mrs Sutton.

I fear that for some this reads as frightening. It undermines the one thing they love. It actually does not need remove the need for Commons as a platform. Quite the opposite; it will bring new tools to finally leverage all the data on images. It may bring this image of Mrs Sutton to Wikidata for starters.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - its sex ratio II

In April 2014 I blogged about the sex ration at Wikidata. At the time there were 1,332,383 "humans", 760,616 were male and 154,455 were female. Now in April 2016, the numbers are different: there are 3,135,792 humans, 2,442,444 are male and 466,748 are female.

The percentages were: 57% males, 12% females and 31% unknowns. This time they are 78% male, 15% female and 7% unknown.

Based on these Wikidata numbers, the gap between men and women has substantially increased. On the other hand, the number of humans that were not identified as male or female has substantially decreased.

This does not mean at all that the movement to chip at the gender gap is a bust. Far from it. Numbers only expose realities. What can easily be achieved in Wikidata is more focus on the females in any group. The subject I focus on is mental health and I concentrate on female psychiatrists or psychologists. I add statements for them and add where possible the data from categories to Wikidata. In this way they become better connected, more information becomes available. In this way the subject I care for gains quality and relevance and it is women who benefit most.

Numbers provide an indicator, when numbers are this big they should not have our focus. At best they move glacially. More relevant is to know if they as a group, gain more readers over time. These numbers reflect an increase in quality of articles and data. That is an approach that has potential.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - #YLE, the #Goldman environmental Prize and the #ArticlePlaceHolder

#YLE is a Finnish public broadcaster that announced that it will use Wikidata to label its articles and news items. This is really cool because it means that they have an interest to supply missing labels in Finnish and as a consequence we actually benefit from them.

So let us consider what we can do to make both their and our life more pleasant.

When something happens that is "notable", for instance the latest announcement of the Goldman environmental Prize awardees, we can add the winners. One of the winners is from Cambodia, It can trigger a request for Mr Leng Ouch's article to be written in Cambodian. We can update lists of award winners of the award. We can link to articles in the Finnish press for each and all of them.

Once more newsagents use Wikidata, new use of labels indicates breaking news or renewed interest. This may help journalists worldwide to stay on top of what is current. This may all happen but the most important benefit is that it ensures that Wikidata remains up to date.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikimedia - Jimmy Wales is not a constitutional monarch

Thank you Durova

Having known Jimmy / Jimbo Wales for a long time, I appreciate him for the many things he does. Particularly the many things we do not really hear about. Jimbo either has the ultimate conflict of interest, or is best positioned to do well for the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects.

At the start Jimmy was the founder and financier of Wikipedia and as it became a bigger success, he could no longer afford his hobby. He was apprehensive to let go and slowly but surely handed over more power to what is the board of the Wikimedia Foundation.

His role changed and he became more of an ambassador at large. Jimmy is not a constitutional monarch with an entourage that prevents him from being "political" or personal. I have personally experienced on several occasions where Jimbo was instrumental in bringing people together. It is why I am more than happy to express my happiness that he is who he is and does what he does.

The only question I have for his detractors is: if not Jimmy who else can perform the role that is uniquely his?
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata - the Panama Papers

The Panama Papers brings to light how the rich and famous hide their wealth. Arguably this is typically a criminal activity because it prevents them to be liable for their possessions according to the law of the country they live in. Liability comes in many ways; it is recognition what it is you own, what you are taxed and also what conflicts of interests exist. In an interview for Amnesty International, Mr Snowden says it well; "Privacy is for the powerless. Transparency is for the powerful."

The Panama Papers brings much needed transparency and there is one big difference with the unwanted intrusions on their privacy they suffer. They are in the limelight because of their lack of transparency in their actions and the resulting negative effect on society. It would be good when organisations that spy publish any and all of these transgressions. A change of focus like this would ensure a much more equitable society and it is easy to argue that it will make us all more secure.

The English Wikipedia has a list of people who are implicated by these Panama Papers. The information has been included in Wikidata. It is therefore easy to have the information in any Wikipedia. The ListeriaBot will perform updates on a regular basis. The only manual maintenance is including the necessary labels.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - labelling and the ArticlePlaceholder

The ArticlePlaceholder is a Wikimedia extension. It has huge potential to rapidly increase the available information in any and all Wikipedias because Wikidata has more data than any Wikipedia has articles. The big initial issue: How to translate the labels into the language of a Wikipedia.

There are many approaches and the initial one is to concentrate on "red links" first. With "red links" linked to Wikidata items, the ArticlePlaceholder may express the data as information for that Wikipedia. That is one big incentive to write the missing article :). Missing labels associated with properties may be added to localise all the information available on an item

It then becomes interesting; What to do next? There are the categories, the lists associated with articles. It would work, it would rapidly expand the number of items linked through ArticlePlaceholders. It would also rather quickly expand the number of items that seek a translation of their label. These can be found and sorted in order of prevalence.

Another approach would be to add labels as many labels as possible in Wikidata. When this results in terms that can be found, ArticlePlaceholders may be created when they are requested. When we keep track of the requests for ArticlePlaceholders, we can even prioritise the writing of missing articles.

Adding labels can be done in multiple ways; we can use dictionaries, we can transliterate. We can even use bots to do all this automagically for us. The biggest difference will be made when we seek and find collaboration. For most languages there are schools where students need to write papers. Particularly in the smaller projects this may make a huge difference. As they research their topic, they can localise all the missing labels starting from a "Concept cloud" for a subject.

Once this work gets underway, small Wikipedias will rapidly increase the number of subjects that are being served. The big question is not if it will be worthwhile but how it will affect Wikipedia article writing.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikipedia - Naomi Ellemers and sources

Mrs Ellemers is a professor in social psychology. Her work has been recognised by many awards and the English Wikipedia does report about this correctly. The European Association of Experimental Social Psychology recognised her twice; once with the Kurt Lewin medal and once with the Jos Jaspars Medal.

Recognising people for their achievements is relevant because it indicates how peers appreciate one of their own. It is also a way to establish notability. Like so many topics for credibility sources are important. They are however susceptible to "bit rot". The EAESP changed its website and all the Wikipedia links are dead.

Wikidata knows about these awards as well and, each has a link to the URL for "official website". On it you find all recipients of the award. Mrs Ellemers is good; the new sources provide the needed confirmation.

Awards for a person can be a list generated by Wikidata. Associated sources can be as well. With Wikidata as the source for lists and sources, Wikipedians are free to provide the textual content about a subject and Wikidata would be the place to store sources and lists. In this way information will be maintained in one place and quality for all articles will improve.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikimedia - #India and #Wikisource

Subhashish Panigrahi wrote about the challenges facing Wikipedia and the languages of India. It is a good article and it is well worth a read.

It presents eight challenges, the one of most interest is that people often feel that their language is not present on the web. The question is how to raise relevance on the web.

When you consider relevant projects in the Indian language, the one that stands out most is Wikisource. It is an easy point of entry to writing in a language; it trains people to use their language in their script. What is to be written is in a scan so language proficiency is not even assumed.

As a member of the language committee I am on record that if there is a credible growth path for a Wikisource particularly when a notable organisation will support the project for at least a year, I want us to allow a new Wikisource as soon as possible.

At the same time we need to consider how to make the effort in Wikisource more visible. I want someone with some "marketing" savvy to consider how to bring our finished projects to potential readers. There are plenty of people in India and elsewhere. Investing just a little will have encourage our projects a lot and it may increase our community a lot.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikimedia - how to deal with #diversity

#Wikipedia has been analysed sufficiently that we know that in so many ways it is not diverse enough. Too few women, too few people of colour, too few people of other cultures and countries.

Such analysis are typically made for English Wikipedia only. The same analysis can be made for any other Wikipedia. Emily is an inspiration but the effect she has is mostly limited to English Wikipedia so we need more people to get involved and make a notable difference in the things that divide us.

Great science is repeatable and research on Wikipedia is done best on the data in Wikidata. Queries about the number of entries relevant to diversity are easily done. Restricting information to a particular Wikipedia is not a problem either. The benefit of using Wikidata is that you can determine what a Wikipedia does not know about but what we as a community find notable.

Research should serve a purpose. When notable people do not have an article, it should be easy and obvious how to determine this as a result. This list of female psychiatrists shows who does or does not have an article in the English Wikipedia. Write an article about one of them and next time you run the query there is one person less without an article. This query can be easily amended in any way you like.

Research serves its purpose when it identifies issues and provides pointers how to deal with it.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata - #women in #psychiatry II

Paula Caplan - foto by Lesley Bohm

As diversity is important and as psychiatry has my focus, it is obvious what to do. I concentrate on Wikidata and among others I made several improvements to the item of Mrs Caplan. One thing was missing so I asked for a photo to be published under a free license.

Mrs Caplan was underwhelmed with Wikidata, yes I showed her "Reasonator" but the information is incomplete. She send me this photo and her resume and she informed me that the Wikipedia article about her is incorrect in places.

So the challenge is to improve her article, do justice to who she is and the relevance of her work in psychiatry. Evaluate it and seek a neutral point of view of what her science tells us in other articles as well.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikimedia - Learning from #Google #search

When the Wikimedia Foundation is to learn one thing from Google to improve its search, you can find the basics in the above image. When you consider it carefully, it is all about compartmentalising. What Google offers are distinct categories of results and, these categories exist in our projects as well.

• The first tab would provide our current search results. No investment needed.
• The second tab is images.. A massive amount of work is needed to make it useful but hey, we have it on Commons. So why not offer it. As people start to use it, we can tweak it, improve it 
• The third tab is videos.. 
• Maps is something we could do. We should do it in cooperation with OpenStreetMap and go from there
• News.. why not, it will be a shot in the arm for Wikinews
• We could have results for Wikidata.. It will be usable certainly when it is done in a Reaonator kind of way..

We do not need much funding to provide search in this way. We will do a better job at fulfilling our mission. What do you think?

Thanks,

       GerardM

#Wikidata - #women in #psychiatry

Women who make their mark in psychiatry are underreported. Currently Wikidata knows currently about 366 female psychiatrists. Many of them have been off the trodden path, many of them have expressed opinions that are very much in contrast with what is generally accepted at true.

I learned about one person, Mrs Paula Caplan because her books and publications were not accepted on a forum that is supposed to support people. Mrs Caplan is a decorated psychiatrist, a professor it is just that a corporate sponsor did not like what she had to say. One of the awards she received, the Christine Ladd-Franklin award she shared with another professor; Mrs Lisa Cosgrove. When you read her resume, it is not strange to find that she does not have a Wikipedia article. Her work addresses the problems and ethical dilemmas that arise in the mental health field (especially in psychiatry) when there are financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and researchers or professional organizations.

One way to chip at the gender gap in our Wikimedia world is by adding info about all the remarkable women of psychiatry in Wikipedia or Wikidata. When you read about all the missing people, it becomes obvious how much work there is to do justice to them and to their work.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - Joe Filceolaire RIP

As Wikidata matures, so do its contributors. Death is part of life and it is with sadness that we learned that Filceolaire passed away. He was a very active and well liked man.
Thanks,
      Gerard

#Wikipedia - anti-psychiatry and Mrs Elizabeth Packard

The term "anti-psychiatry" is seen as derogatory. By being labeled as such, many arguments are dismissed. For this reason it is reasonable that the case of Mrs Packard is adorned with the template of "anti-psychiatry" after all she founded the Anti-Insane Asylum Society and wrote several books to make her case.

Mrs Packard was committed to an asylum because a husband could have his wife committed without either a public hearing or her consent. She disagreed with him about religion and the couple also disagreed on child rearing, family finances, and the issue of slavery. In 1863, in part due to pressure from her children who wished her released, the doctors declared that she was incurable and discharged her.

Mrs Packard wrote several books about and founded the "Anti-Insane Asylum Society". In 1867, the State of Illinois passed a "Bill for the Protection of Personal Liberty" which guaranteed all people accused of insanity, including wives, had the right to a public hearing. She also saw similar laws passed in three other states.

When this is what anti-psychiatry is about, I do question the use of  "anti-psychiatry" as something negative.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikimedia Foundation - its importance is overrated

The Wikimedia Foundation has a board. It consists of people that are selected in several ways. Some are elected by the community and some are selected by affiliate organisations; the chapters.

An election is due for board members that will be elected by the chapters. Typically chapters have members and it is they who may influence their chapter to vote.

Taking part in an election is typically done in private. It is up to a chapter representative to seek/listen to suggestions of its members.

Given how little influence the "community" has in this, it is stupid to waste resources and translate what the candidates for the board of the WMF have to say. The representatives of a chapter have been entrusted with the job and they may do as they see fit.

Lets be realistic and not waste resources.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikimedia - the #adoption and #development of #functionality

If there is one chasm between developers and the "community" it is how functionality is perceived. A well known graph explains much of the pain. Software once developed, goes live. When it does for software like MediaWiki everybody in the community will be confronted with the new functionality at the same time. Adoption according to the graph is very much absent.

Some software can be implemented without much opposition. Great examples were the implementation of functionality that improves performance or the implementation of Wikidata to replace the old interwiki links. It is rather obvious because the average Community Joe does not really notice either. When they hear that things improved they are mostly happy for a job well done.

When Community Joe hears about new functionality is relevant. Development is discussed in its own environment but for most people new software is news at the time of deployment. For developers production is end of the line; time to move on. In a typical process from moving from design to a working product, things change. It will not work completely as anticipated even when the best user interface experts were involved. People expect magic and they get what humans can make.

When the community is involved in architecture, there is an even bigger chasm. Many community members are well qualified to argue their case. There are many of them and typically they get disappointed.

After the recent upheavals, it is time to move on. I have participated in the "Inspire campaign" with two ideas. I do not expect much but by expressing these ideas in a place where they are likely to be seen they have a better chance.

What is your idea? What does it take for you to be "inspired"?
Thanks,
       GerardM