What science has to say about the English Wikipedia gender gap

 A respected Wikipedian expressed the opinion that people have it wrong when they say that English Wikipedia is biased against women. In the same week a professor stated on Twitter that her students no longer edit Wikipedia because of the toxic reception they get. As an example she mentioned a quote from an award winning scientist that was removed because "that scientist lacks relevance".

In this same week the  American sociologist Francesca Tripodi published the paper: "Ms. Categorized: Gender, notability, and inequality on Wikipedia". The paper is a scholarly read with 55 references. Most of these references are previous scholarly works, some are references to Wikipedia resources like the notability page. The references have been included in Wikidata and this is visualised in the Scholia for the paper. Please read at least the Discussion and conclusions of the paper. 

This and previous research leaves no room for evasion: English Wikipedia is biased. A personal opinion of the respected Wikipedian may differ, the consensus of the community may differ but both are biased.

Thanks,

      GerardM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks, GerardM

@Wikimedia and its defined #predisposition towards its editors

The predisposition of the Wikimedia Foundation can be found in its mission statement: "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally". Contrast this with a previous version where: "every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge". The Wikimedia Foundation defines the movement with "Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world". 

It is easy to understand how the Wikimedia Foundation priorities on its communities when developing its programs. The assumption has always been that once the data is available, a public will come. In the second part of its mission statement enabling this dissemination it is defined that the Wikimedia has a defined role for it to play in the global and effective dissemination of the educational content it holds.

When you monitor the effectiveness like I have, then you do not care for promises for the future, you want the data to show how a difference is made. An easy one is to compare content delivery in English against all other languages; English content is slightly less than 50% of traffic, this has been the same for many years. When a Commons project that worked for all languages no longer worked because of a failed text integration, it was seen as "we did not test for that". More importantly, the text integration was not removed. This shows that the second part of the WMF mission statement is not seen as critical.

I am a candidate for the board.  In many ways I am the wrong guy for the job. The wrong guy because I have a platform and I do question the lack of growth in the delivery of the content that we have. For me this is a classic situation where lack of data equals no problem. It is not a bias measured in percentage of Wikipedia articles for one group versus another group, the bias I demand attention for is the percentage of data delivered in a languages relative to the size of the population who relies on this language.

The wrong guy because this is not a popular issue. People are offended when you point out that their point of view implies a bias. People fear they lose out because their hobby horse is a niche project comparatively and not part of the mission statement. The right guy because you can check out my past in my blog that I kept for over 15 years, you will find that I have been practical and on mission for dissemination of our content. 

For me it does not matter if I win or lose; the mission itself is critical and I want the Wikimedia board and the Wikimedia director realise that the second part of the Foundation's mission statement is where it could have done so much better.

Thanks,

      GerardM

What to do on the Wikimedia board; imho first things first

It is a stated objective of the Wikimedia Foundation to have "knowledge equity". When you care to know the practicalities, just search Wikimedia in one of the 200 languages with the least Wikipedia content and compare it with a search in English. English provides you with vastly more of everything.

Nowadays, "knowledge equity" is accepted and strategic at the Wikimedia Foundation. This acceptance is a recent development; gone are the days when a most senior WMF executive stated that one Wikipedia, at most five, should be enough. 

Given that we now support some 300 languages, it is the translatewiki.net community has always been the cornerstone to the knowledge equity we provide in our projects. Without its high quality internationalisation and localisation efforts the knowledge equity we provide would not have been possible. It follows that any and all knowledge equity for a culture, a language has as its precondition that the tooling, the environment has been properly localised.

It becomes really strategic when the tooling is provided by outside parties. A key role in ensuring that our references remain available is performed by the Internet Archive. For me it has been on my wish list for a long time that the software of its WayBack Machine, Open Library and FatCat are localised at translatewiki.net. Any and all of our language communities that find the resources will benefit our projects and strengthen us in the shared aim of "sharing in the sum of all knowledge". 

When we are to achieve "knowledge equity", the first thing we should provide is a level playing field. With all tools critical for the maintenance of our projects properly internationalised and available for localisation as a movement we achieve the most basic objective; we enable all our communities to be their best.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Board member of the @Wikimedia Foundation .. for me it is about customer value

Recently many changes happened at the Wikimedia Foundation; its director and its chair of the board ended an illustrious term of office. New elections have been called for board members of the Wikimedia Foundation. This makes it the best of times to ask attention for the customer value our projects provide. 

We want more people to make use of our services and we want to provide more and improved services to them. 

The Wikimedia services are optimised for the English language. More than 50% of our traffic is for the other languages and this makes it easier to improve our service for the 299+ other languages. This has never been a priority there and this makes for many easy pickings.

Commons for instance provides 100% false positives when you look for "bever" with the environment set to Dutch. Old functionality worked really well and it should be easy enough to revert to the full functional version. Research will show if as a result people change their language more pictures are linked to Wikidata and Wikidata gains more labels as a result. When people do search with a string that provides no result, we can search Wiktionary and ask show suggestions for what we find. Oh and when people are from Singapore, why not be biased and show pictures from Singapore first?

One of the challenges for any Wikipedia is the maintenance of lists. Particularly for the smaller projects it is too much of a drain. I have dabbled with for instance lists of African politicians. Arguably information on the current national functionaries for any country should be available and up to date as much as American or European politicians. When a Wikipedia wants to have an up to date list, it should be possible to subscribe to a list. The functionality is to be supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. When for whatever a community does not want such functionality, they can still be pinged when there is some work for them to do.

Wikisourcerers transcribed original works in many languages. As a project Wikisource is great for the sourcerers but for readers ... For some languages websites were created where the finished works have a friendly interface for READERS.. Bringing all the work to a public, is what brings value to all the work the sourcerers put in..

We may not be a commercial organisation but the service we provide is relevant and valuable to our "customers". When you read my blog that has been running for sixteen years, you find that I have been consistent in bringing attention to what we could do to improve our service. Given that we could do so much more, I put myself forward as a candidate for board member of the Wikimedia Foundation. The least I hope to achieve is attention for the results of what we do.

Thanks, GerardM

@Wikimedia needs your support because what it does, what we do is not enough

 An article in the "Daily Dot" insists that Wikimedia has plenty of money.  This is based on the growth of Wikimedia budgets and yes, it has grown substantially over time. Particularly the English Wikipedia provides a lot of content and serves some 50% of the Wikimedia traffic. 

When people analyse its content, it becomes problematic. Even though its content is referenced, many of the references are old and could do with new insights that science brings on a regular basis. The content is male oriented and thanks to projects like "Women in Red" it has improved substantially but not enough. 

We know all mayors of Denver and we do not know National government ministers of African countries. Lists are to be maintained on EVERY Wikipedia, English consensus insists, and they are not properly maintained as a result. Not even on the English Wikipedia.

Money buys you things. When you donate to the WMF, you gain a sense of ownership. That is important; we may not need more money but we do need a sense of ownership in India, Columbia, Nigeria and Guinea. When the other 50% of Wikimedia traffic takes ownership away from those who had enough, we find topics with more real world relevance. Commons becomes usable in the other 299 languages and we seek out these 299 communities to make it work for them.

Given that we don't do enough for 300 languages, given that we can do much better, I will argue that Wikimedia needs more support, even money.

Thanks, GerardM

Listeria, motivation and the Sharif of Mecca

Awn ar-Rafiq was the Sharif of Mecca from 1882 to 1905. Doesn't he look splendid in his regalia?

The Sharif of Mecca was a high placed functionary of the Ottoman Empire for many years and as such there is a Listeria list for the Sharif of Mecca. The point of these lists is that the quality of the information we maintain about the Ottoman Empire is not of a high quality. The Ottoman Empire existed longer than the Roman Empire, covered a larger expanse  and it is not yet one hundred years ago when it came to an end.

I looked into lists of functionaries on several Wikipedias and they are not consistent. So I created Listeria lists and as people add things to Wikidata, these lists are updated.. that is the theory and I am happy that this functionality has been restored.

The best bit is when other people take an interest as well. A new functionary is added; ولي الدين رفعت باشا and he will get his place in the list .. Google translates it into "Wali al-Din Rifat Pasha" and hey we can bring things to the next level.

Lists like these should be stable and they do entice cooperation. It is why I am so grateful that Magnus spend some time reviving the functionality.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Ponderings on a book: Flammable Australia The Fire Regimes and Biodiversity of a Continent

Books are often used as a reference in a scientific publication. As I often add "citations" to individual papers, I find that books are a headache. Wikidata only "knows" about this book through two book reviews. When you google the book there are two versions of the book. Open Library "knows" about both versions but has no readable version. What I need is a reference to only one chapter of the book.

The first thing I did was changed the reviews into reviews, add the book and linked the reviews to the book. Open Library knows about two versions of the book. I linked both versions to the same author and linked the 2001 version to Wikidata. Finally I added the chapter in a haphazard way to the paper I am working on.

It is unlikely that I will ever read the book and it is very likely that others will frown on the way I added the book to Wikidata. However, for me "level 0 of data quality" applies; with data available particularly linked data, it is much easier to find fault and improve on what is there. I know that a bot will format the ISBN-10 entry I included.

The one reason why I add books is because books linked to OpenLibrary may be read by a wider public. Obviously not all books are available at this time, but the cumulative effect of adding all the books, all these links enrich the ability to read, to share in the sum of available knowledge.

Thanks, GerardM

The @Wikimedia's #endowment aim is to reduce risk.

When you assess risk, when the purpose of the Wikimedia's endowment is to ensure the future operation of Wikipedia and probably other projects like Commons as well, money is not the only risk to consider.

The current government of the USA operates in a way that poses no or little thread to the continued operation of the WMF. However, the USA is a two party system and the same can not be said when the Republican Party is to return to power. 

All the servers that run the Wikimedia projects are currently in the United States. With servers able to run the full stack of Wikimedia projects elsewhere, two objectives are served. 

• up to date data becomes closer to the readers close to the new servers
• the risk of an USA that turns on the Wikimedia Foundation is mitigated

The WMF does not need to use the endowment to make this happen. Given its current finances, it should be an operational decision.

Thanks,

        GerardM

Wikipedia is a "Work in Progress"

In many ways Wikipedia reflects the world as both are ever evolving. Once an article is finished for the moment, it in effect becomes a time capsule comprised of text, images and references. All these sleeping beauties wait for an update that comes once the realisation sets in that the article is behind the times. With 6,290,486 articles, it is obvious that there is a Bell curve of articles ranging from "up to date" to "out of date". 

So far the "Watch list" has been reactive. There are a few areas that can indicate that an article needs attention because it may be out of date. Wikipedia articles have references, when a reference is a "scholarly article", it is normal when an article will be cited by future articles. These publication can strengthen or weaken the assertions made in a Wikipedia article.

In Wikidata there is a bot that continuously updates "scholarly articles" with its citations. When one of these articles is used as a reference in Wikipedia, it merits attention. This can be reflected both on a Watch list and on the article itself.

Having the latest literature available will help settling disputes among editors as well.

Thanks,

      GerardM

How to find pictures of a თახვი (it means beaver) or a Wisent? Please help!!

Wikimedia Commons is the biggest repository of freely licensed media files. It serves a global multi lingual community editing Wikipedia and it has the ambition to serve students as well. When you live in Georgia and you don't speak English, you search for a "თახვი" and this picture is all that you find.

There is a tool for that. Hay's sdsearch does a good job when its interface is localised. Sadly, no such luck for Georgian. Wikimedia produced a tool as well; Special:MediaSearch does a good job. You have to know that the tool exists and when you do, you find that for Dutch it does not work at all. 

It is suggested that you can change the preferences for best result. I fail at getting the results that Special:MediaSearch used to provide. There is no documentation.. Please Help!!

Thanks, GerardM

Scholarly articles in @Wikidata and its link with #Fatcat

 "Dam-site selection by beavers in an eastern Oregon basin" is a scholarly paper. It has a DOI that is not functional, it is known to Researchgate and consequently we can find a PDF of the paper. 

This paper is cited by a paper I have an interest in. I am adding its references into Wikidata (this is its Scholia) and I added the "Dam-site selection" paper to make a complete reference.  The result is something like this.

The PDF of the paper is available for download and as is to be expected, the Way Back machine of the Internet Archive has a copy as well for the URL of the download page. And then there is Internet Archive's Fatcat. 

"Fatcat is a versioned, publicly-editable catalog of research publications: journal articles, conference proceedings, pre-prints, blog posts, and so forth. The goal is to improve the state of preservation and access to these works by providing a manifest of full-text content versions and locations."

Wikidata is used as a source of Fatcat and as I include an additional paper, it will at some stage be picked up by Fatcat. If there is one thing to wish for, it is a function where entering a Wikidata Qid will trigger Fatcat to update its data based on the Wikidata info. If I can have two more wishes, one would be an icon for Fatcat. The second would be a Fatcat identifier making it easy to link from Wikidata to Fatcat.

Thanks,

        GerardM

Wikicite: "No #rewilding in Wales" but why or why not?

No rewilding with a background of bracken

There is rewilding practice, there is rewilding science and there is rewilding controversy. Never mind how you define rewilding, it has been practices for a long time and rewilding practitioners want scientists to study the efficacy of their work. 

There are many papers that are about rewilding or touch on rewilding and as I am fascinated by rewilding, it is all too easy to concentrate on the papers and people that I like. So I am adding all the cited papers for "Abandoning or Reimagining a Cultural Heartland? Understanding and Responding to Rewilding Conflicts in Wales - the Case of the Cambrian Wildwood". The full text is available only as a PDF and as a consequence I have to google for every citation not yet in Wikidata. The result is a wealth of additional papers (they have a DOI), and new books etc have a mention on the Wikidata item.

As more papers on conservation, rewilding and its politics find their way in Wikidata, not only the Scholia for that paper evolves all the papers it touches have at least one "citing paper". The version of the tool that I use, SourceMD, is the first iteration of a tool that in a later iteration looked up authors from ORCiD ... Sadly no longer available. It has me use the author disambiguator to replace author strings with references to authors expanding the Scholia representations for authors and papers even more.

When you find scholarly papers interesting and you know what papers it cites, it should provide a mix op opinions balanced to make what is the point of the paper. At that it is comparable to a NPOV article in a Wikipedia. One provides original research and the other reflects on the available research.

What I do is in a wiki way.. When another paper takes my attention away, I leave a paper to eventually return to it. It is one reason why I work sequentially from top to bottom and add everything.

Thanks, GerardM

Wikicite from the ground up: attending a symposium on "rewilding"

 

Professor Dr Liesbeth Bakker has as a role to establish the science behind the rewilding practice. Professor Bakker has been appointed as the Special Professor of Rewilding Ecology at Wageningen UR in April 2020. Because of the Corona pandemic, her maiden speech is for now replaced with a one time symposium on the subject. Anyone can attend, it is wildly popular and you can attend to this one day event as well. 

Rewilding is being practices on a large scale, it did not happen overnight, there is a large amount of scholarly work that will be the basis of what Professor Bakker will consider in her own research.

What I can do for the occasion is make a Scholia for the conference? I can add more citations to papers, I can attribute papers to scholars. The bottom line for citations is that they are an invite to read more papers, to get to a better understanding of what is considered. Providing a better understanding of rewilding is the role Professor Bakker. When the public is to understand subjects like rewilding, ecology Wikipedia is the first place people go to. Its references can now link to Wikidata but from there it is still a huge step to a Scholia for a paper and better understanding of a paper.

When the subject matter of rewilding is to be more inclusively covered in Wikidata, it follows that the ecology of Wikidata has to play its role. It consists of items, properties and qualifiers. It has its data with  bots and users all iterating on. Applying this ecology for a purpose is a challenge.

As a paper like "Wild Steps in a semi-wild setting? Habitat selection and behavior of European bison reintroduced to an enclosure in an anthropogenic landscape" has no references in Wikidata, there is not much in its Scholia. Compare that to this paper where references exist to all the cited papers. Wikidata provides a rabbit hole that can help bring context to subjects, authors and papers. What to do for rewilding is very much a collective challenge.

Thanks, GerardM

Wikicite from the ground up: understanding wildfires

The world has to deal with climate change and one of its effects is the severity of wildfires. One paper on the subject is "Can trophic rewilding reduce the impact of fire in a more flammable world?" It is only one paper, there are others. It caught my attention after watching YouTube about goats and blogging about rewilding..

When I found the paper, it did not have any "cites work" statements. In the PDF of the paper, references to 91 other works can be found. Text in a PDF is problematic; you may scrape the titles and search for a match but you won't find them in Wikidata even when they are there. This is because of missing spaces and special characters that are different in Wikidata. It has been a lot of work finding and linking many of the citations. 

The effect of these references on the Scholia for the paper is staggering. It demonstrates the power of open data; authors of the cited papers are shown, there is an accumulation of the papers they have in common. The associated subjects are shown and have their own weight. 

The papers informs that there are 91 cited papers, at this time only 54 papers have been linked. All of them have a title, a DOI. The Scholia presentation is the best we have for the paper but it is as a consequence incomplete. Why not have a "Cites work string"? Combined with attributes like "series ordinal" and "DOI" even "Main subject" it completes missing information for the paper. Bots can pick up on this, check Wikidata for the DOI, add the paper when we do not have it and even replace the string when it is with the process of checking and importing papers. 

When people take the effort of understanding a subject like "wildfires" and enrich important papers, the power of their work followed by the work done by bots opens up scholarly papers even more to the people who care to learn from the scholarly papers themselves.

Thanks, GerardM

Wikicite from the ground up: a call to action

Many of the world's ecological systems are under thread. All kinds of reasons may be given and there is an interplay between the many causes that affect a downward spiral. Similar patterns can be found in many places and when these patterns are broken up, an ecological restoration may be one of the consequences.

I was called stupid when I said that water management is essential and suggested that beavers in California could do a lot of good. Beavers have been extinct in California for over 100 years, the many gullies in a watershed rush water straight to sea. Consequently the water table is not restored resulting is an increase in the risk of fires. So I am stupid, but at least I read some papers lately.

I follow the Mulloon Institute on Twitter, they have been restoring the watershed of the Mulloon Creek, this Australian project has been running for more than 10 years and apart from all the other benefits it restored profits to farmers by 60%. To underpin their results, they perform scientific research with the aim of convincing incredulous farmers and government to consider alternatives. This project is recognised by the United Nations as a research project. 

One of the papers they produced is about a possible reintroduction of the Green and Golden Bell Frog in the Mulloon catchment. I understand this paper to be about  an indicator species. From a scientific point of view, there are no issues, the paper is richly referenced and when you want to read scientific papers about the Green and Golden Bell Frog, check out its Scholia..

The problem is that like so many papers, it does not have a DOI and the best insurance for it being available in the future is the "Wayback Machine". It was not known there and it is now.. When papers are to be known to the general public, adding a paper like this to Wikidata is a next step. 

More can be done; for instance adding the references in the paper to the Wikidata item. Maybe there is an update about an introduction of the Green and Golden Bell Frog in the Mulloon Creek, who knows.. I did not find it.

Thanks, GerardM

Wikicite from the ground up: references

When a point is made in Wikipedia, when a statement is made in Wikidata, best practice is to include a reference. The same is true in a scholarly paper, its references are typically found in a references section.

Wikicite is a project that brings many scholarly papers into Wikidata as beautiful as it is, it is a top down process. As an ordinary editor there is a lot that you can do to enrich the result.

The paper, "Can trophic rewilding reduce the impact of fire in a more flammable world?" has a DOI, the PDF includes a reference section. It takes a lot of effort to add the authors and papers it cites to Wikidata. The visibility of the paper improves and so does the visibility of the paper it cites. The Scholia shows that at this time, this paper is not used as a reference in Wikipedia. 

There is now a template that retrieves information from Wikidata for its reference data. It will be great when it is widely adopted because it provides an additional pathway from Wikipedia to the used references and the information relating to the reference.

So what can we do to improve on the quality of the data in Wikidata. First, the processes that import the bulk of new data are crucial, they are essential and need to be appreciated as such. The next part is enabling a community to improve the data. A recent paper explained what can be done with a top down approach. All kinds of decisions were made for us and the result feels like a one off project. 

When ORCID is considered to be our partner, it makes sense to invite people registered at ORCID to contribute to Wikidata. Their papers can be uploaded from ORCID into Wikidata, their co-authors and references can be linked by these people. As they do this while being logged into ORCID, we are assured because of their known personal involvement and use this as a reference.

The quality of such a reference is better than our current references that came with a link to an "author name string". Who knows that the disambiguation was correct? When a paper is linked to at least one known ORCID person with public information, we have a link we can verify and consequently it becomes a link we can trust. Once the link with a person with a ORCID identifier is established, we can ask to acknowledge the  changes that happen in his or her papers. Our quality is enhanced and a sense of community with ORCID is established.

Thanks, GerardM

Wikicite from the ground up: "Trophic rewilding"

In nature conservation, trophic rewilding and trophic cascades are important topics. When an animal like the howler monkey is no longer around, it no longer distributes the seeds of trees. The likely effect is that in time plants are no longer part of the ecosystem. Reintroducing a howler monkey restores the relation; it is considered an example of trophic rewilding.

At Wikipedia there is no article about trophic rewilding. As someone famously said, references are the most important part of a Wikipedia article, let's start with finding references.

There is a longstanding process of importing data about scholarly papers, all kinds of scholarly papers. Some of them have "trophic rewilding" in their title. Trophic rewilding was not known as a subject so it was easy enough to look for "trophic rewilding" and add it as a subject. Slowly but surely the Scholia representation evolves. More papers means more authors and more authors known to have collaborated on multiple publications. More citations are found for these papers and by inference they have a relation to the subject.

The initial set of data is already good enough to get a grasp of the subject but when you want more, you can look for missing data using Scholia, information like missing authors. The author disambiguator aids in finding papers for the missing author. With such iterations, the Scholia for trophic rewilding becomes more complete.

Another avenue to improve the coverage of a subject is by adding "cites work" in Wikidata for a paper like this one. Not all cited works are known to Wikidata but the effect can be impressive. NB The citations are often found in a PDF  and not in the article..

Slowly but surely all the scholarly references to be used for a new article are available, you can use a template in the article to link to the (evolving) Scholia. The best bit is you can add this template in an existing Wikipedia article as well providing a scholarly rabbit hole for interested readers.

Thanks, GerardM

Wikicite from the ground up - oyster reefs

 

I watched this video having looked for oysters and oyster reefs. They are a thing in the Netherlands, we don't have them enough of them and should have them as a functioning ecosystem. 

The video starts with a Prof A. Randall Hughes moving into the water for an experiment. Prof Hughes was already in Wikidata from 2018. Being triggered by the video, adding additional information and papers is for me the thing to do. One of her paper is about oyster reefs, linking the paper to the item for oyster reefs includes her in the Scholia for oyster reef. 

Wikicite is about citations and one of its ambitions is to link Wikipedia references. There are many articles referenced that include the subject of the article: "oyster reef" but only one of them can be found in Wikidata. When you check the authors, Megan K. La Peyre is an associate Research Professor in the School of Renewable Natural Resources at Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, her name you will find quite often. It is cumbersome to add papers by hand, I made a stab at one of them. Only to find that I have to merge two items for Prof La Peyre because "there can be only one". 

Given that the scholarly papers among these references all have a DOI, we should have a tool that collects all DOI from the reference section of an article. It then gets the information from CrossRef using the DOI, includes the publication in Wikidata AND, something on my wishlist, link it to the Wikipedia article where it is used as a reference.

The objective of this tool is not so much expanding Wikidata but make it easy and obvious to find more information and publications on a topic through co-authors, subjects and Wikipedia articles where the same paper is used as a reference. When references are considered by some as the most important component of an article, it follows that it should be easy to expand from there in a whole different rabbit hole.

Thanks, GerardM

Wikicite, but from the bottom up

Wikicite is one of the most active projects in Wikidata. Its purpose is to "develop open citations and linked bibliographic data to serve free knowledge". A lot of work has been done over the years, there is only one issue; what purpose does it serve.

One of the visible parts of Wikicite are the many Scholia presentations for information. Papers, authors, organisations, subjects even combinations. There is a template that enables the inclusion of Scholia information on a Wikipedia article like here.

One objective of Wikicite is to become the repository of all references of Wikipedia articles. This is where progress is possible enabling people like myself to combine the two and make it easier for Wikipedia editors to find even more sources.. I spend a lot of time adding the subject "trophic cascade" to scholarly articles that include the phrase "trophic cascade" in its title. In addition I attributed the papers of many a scholar as well. This is reflected in the Scholia for trophic cascade. Many of the papers in the references part of the English article are these same papers.

Referenced articles may be specific to multiple subjects and, may be part of the references of multiple articles. When we know all the papers used as references in a Wikipedia article in Wikidata, we can make the information in a Scholia even more useful. 

The information of existing papers with authors and citations can be enriched. For references we can add new papers., the subject of the Wikipedia article can be marked as a "main subject" for the paper as well. We weave a mighty web in this way. Our quality will be improved by flagging retracted papers and we can flag articles for an update when new information becomes available as well.

What we do does not have to be complete. That is not the way, that is not the Wiki way. When we start with what we have, we will find that it is already really useful.

Thanks, GerardM