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Wikidata weekly summary #294

Facto Post – Issue 8 – 15 January 2018

Facto Post – Issue 8 – 15 January 2018

Metadata on the March

From the days of hard-copy liner notes on music albums, metadata have stood outside a piece or file, while adding to understanding of where it comes from, and some of what needs to be appreciated about its content. In the GLAM sector, the accumulation of accurate metadata for objects is key to the mission of an institution, and its presentation in cataloguing.

Today Wikipedia turns 17, with worlds still to conquer. Zooming out from the individual GLAM object to the ontology in which it is set, one such world becomes apparent: GLAMs use custom ontologies, and those introduce massive incompatibilities. From a recent article by sadads, we quote the observation that "vocabularies needed for many collections, topics and intellectual spaces defy the expectations of the larger professional communities." A job for the encyclopedist, certainly. But the data-minded Wikimedian has the advantages of Wikidata, starting with its multilingual data, and facility with aliases. The controlled vocabulary — sometimes referred to as a "thesaurus" as term of art — simplifies search: if a "spade" must be called that, rather than "shovel", it is easier to find all spade references. That control comes at a cost.

SVG pedestrian crosses road
Zebra crossing/crosswalk, Singapore

Case studies in that article show what can lie ahead. The schema crosswalk, in jargon, is a potential answer to the GLAM Babel of proliferating and expanding vocabularies. Even if you have no interest in Wikidata as such, simply vocabularies V and W, if both V and W are matched to Wikidata, then a "crosswalk" arises from term v in V to w in W, whenever v and w both match to the same item d in Wikidata.

For metadata mobility, match to Wikidata. It's apparently that simple: infrastructure requirements have turned out, so far, to be challenges that can be met.


To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see below.
Editor Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him. Back numbers are here.
Reminder: WikiFactMine pages on Wikidata are at WD:WFM.

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:38, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #295

Wikidata weekly summary #296

Wikidata weekly summary #297

Facto Post – Issue 9 – 5 February 2018

Facto Post – Issue 9 – 5 February 2018

m:Grants:Project/ScienceSource is the new ContentMine proposal: please take a look.

Wikidata as Hub

One way of looking at Wikidata relates it to the semantic web concept, around for about as long as Wikipedia, and realised in dozens of distributed Web institutions. It sees Wikidata as supplying central, encyclopedic coverage of linked structured data, and looks ahead to greater support for "federated queries" that draw together information from all parts of the emerging network of websites.

Another perspective might be likened to a photographic negative of that one: Wikidata as an already-functioning Web hub. Over half of its properties are identifiers on other websites. These are Wikidata's "external links", to use Wikipedia terminology: one type for the DOI of a publication, another for the VIAF page of an author, with thousands more such. Wikidata links out to sites that are not nominally part of the semantic web, effectively drawing them into a larger system. The crosswalk possibilities of the systematic construction of these links was covered in Issue 8.

Wikipedia:External links speaks of them as kept "minimal, meritable, and directly relevant to the article." Here Wikidata finds more of a function. On viaf.org one can type a VIAF author identifier into the search box, and find the author page. The Wikidata Resolver tool, these days including Open Street Map, Scholia etc., allows this kind of lookup. The hub tool by maxlath takes a major step further, allowing both lookup and crosswalk to be encoded in a single URL.


To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see below.
Editor Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him. Back numbers are here.
Reminder: WikiFactMine pages on Wikidata are at WD:WFM.

If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:50, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #298

Wikidata weekly summary #299

Wikidata weekly summary #300

Wikidata weekly summary #301

Wikidata weekly summary #302

Facto Post – Issue 10 – 12 March 2018

Facto Post – Issue 10 – 12 March 2018

Milestone for mix'n'match

Around the time in February when Wikidata clicked past item Q50000000, another milestone was reached: the mix'n'match tool uploaded its 1000th dataset. Concisely defined by its author, Magnus Manske, it works "to match entries in external catalogs to Wikidata". The total number of entries is now well into eight figures, and more are constantly being added: a couple of new catalogs each day is normal.

Since the end of 2013, mix'n'match has gradually come to play a significant part in adding statements to Wikidata. Particularly in areas with the flavour of digital humanities, but datasets can of course be about practically anything. There is a catalog on skyscrapers, and two on spiders.

These days mix'n'match can be used in numerous modes, from the relaxed gamified click through a catalog looking for matches, with prompts, to the fantastically useful and often demanding search across all catalogs. I'll type that again: you can search 1000+ datasets from the simple box at the top right. The drop-down menu top left offers "creation candidates", Magnus's personal favourite. m:Mix'n'match/Manual for more.

For the Wikidatan, a key point is that these matches, however carried out, add statements to Wikidata if, and naturally only if, there is a Wikidata property associated with the catalog. For everyone, however, the hands-on experience of deciding of what is a good match is an education, in a scholarly area, biographical catalogs being particularly fraught. Underpinning recent rapid progress is an open infrastructure for scraping and uploading.

Congratulations to Magnus, our data Stakhanovite!

3D printing

To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see below.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:26, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #303

March 2018

Information icon Hello, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. This is just a note to let you know that I've moved the draft that you were working on to Draft:Archivemail, from its old location at User:Zazpot/Archivemail. This has been done because the Draft namespace is the preferred location for Articles for Creation submissions. Please feel free to continue to work on it there. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to ask me on my talk page. Thank you. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 18:10, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Information icon Hello, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. This is just a note to let you know that I've moved the draft that you were working on to Draft:Grepmail, from its old location at User:Zazpot/Grepmail. This has been done because the Draft namespace is the preferred location for Articles for Creation submissions. Please feel free to continue to work on it there. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to ask me on my talk page. Thank you. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 18:11, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Information icon Hello, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. This is just a note to let you know that I've moved the draft that you were working on to Draft:Mairix, from its old location at User:Zazpot/Mairix. This has been done because the Draft namespace is the preferred location for Articles for Creation submissions. Please feel free to continue to work on it there. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to ask me on my talk page. Thank you. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 18:12, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Information icon Hello, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. This is just a note to let you know that I've moved the draft that you were working on to Draft:Notmuch, from its old location at User:Zazpot/Notmuch. This has been done because the Draft namespace is the preferred location for Articles for Creation submissions. Please feel free to continue to work on it there. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to ask me on my talk page. Thank you. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 18:12, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

@Curb Safe Charmer:, I assume that this (the moving of the four drafts mentioned above) was well-intentioned, but it seems inappropriate in multiple ways:
  • I did not request it to be done; and
  • I did not want it to be done, at least not now; and
  • I am capable of doing it myself when I am ready for it to be done; and, moreover
  • the drafts are not currently in the Articles for Creation submission process.
Therefore, please can you revert those edits of yours? Thank you.
N.B. I appreciate your offer for me to discuss the matter on your talk page. However, that would fragment the conversation, which is why I have replied here instead. Zazpot (talk) 20:13, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Hello Zazpot. I am following the procedure outlined at Category:Stale userspace drafts for the treatment of stale drafts. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 22:56, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. Looks like there has been a chain of events leading up to your actions, in which several things occurred that ideally would not have done. I'll flesh this out with details when I get a chance, and will ping you at that point so that we can progress towards resolving this. Thanks. Zazpot (talk) 07:59, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
@Curb Safe Charmer: OK, so here is a (non-exhaustive) list of unfortunate occurrences that resulted in your moving, against my wishes, the four drafts you mentioned above.
  1. the instructions you say you were following should not have been posted at that page (Edit: fixed in 829978477 and 829978261.); and
  2. even if it weren't for WP:IAR, nobody (including you) should feel compelled to follow such improperly-posted instructions.
  • Your actions contravened the guidance given at WP:WikiProject Abandoned Drafts, which states, "Do not take drafts from active users."
  • Item 8 on the list of instructions you say you were following, which appears to be the item you followed in my case, is badly worded. It says, "If the topic looks notable and is not covered in mainspace, but you are not comfortable readying it for mainspace, consider moving it to a suitable title in Draft space to expose it to more editors and encourage improvement." (My emphasis.) This, similarly, contradicts the guidance given at WP:WikiProject Abandoned Drafts, which states, "Do not take drafts from active users." (Edit: fixed in 829979688.)
  • Instead of merely "considering" the move (and consulting with me), you performed the move. In other words, you took an instruction to consider as an instruction to act.
  • Your actions contravened these conventions: "[Avoid] substantially editing another's user and user talk pages other than where it is likely edits are expected and/or will be helpful. If unsure, ask. If a user asks you not to edit their user pages, it is sensible to respect their request..." (My emphasis.)
Accordingly, I ask you again to revert those edits of yours. Thanks. Zazpot (talk) 23:06, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
@Curb Safe Charmer: do you intend to revert those edits of yours, or should I do it? Thanks. Zazpot (talk) 15:46, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
I've now reverted these page moves. I hope you accept that my moves were in good faith and I apologise for any upset caused. I was volunteering in a new area for me, after a request for help clearing the backlog of stale drafts. I was working only from the instructions on that category page and had not been aware of further guidance at WP:WikiProject Abandoned Drafts at that point. I had therefore not seen the "Do not take drafts from active users" instruction. If I had, I would not have done what I did. The instructions I was working off did not point out that the first step should be to check whether the article in question was from an active user - the focus was on the age of the draft. As you know, as soon as I encountered negative feedback on two of the first batch of stale drafts that I reviewed I stopped and sought feedback from a more experienced editor.
I have since seen that there is yet another set of guidelines on this subject, at WP:STALEDRAFT, and they differ again from the version you deleted from the category page and the version on the WikiProject page. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 20:13, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
@Curb Safe Charmer: I appreciate your good intentions, and thank you for reverting the page moves you had performed upon those four drafts. However, that was only part of the job. I have now finished the tidying up after you. I hope that in future you will be sure to ask other editors for their consent before you breeze into their living rooms and rearrange the furniture.
About the inconsistency between WP:STALEDRAFT and WP:WikiProject Abandoned Drafts, it is good that someone (you) noticed the discrepancy. It sounds to me as though fixing these inconsistencies, in a way that respects existing policies, conventions and respect between editors as far as possible, would be a much better use of your energies than moving and templating userspace drafts whose authors may be far from ready to submit them to the AfC process.
I would suggest merging the instructions from WP:WikiProject Abandoned Drafts into those at WP:STALEDRAFT, in order to improve the separation of concerns and division of responsibilities between those two pages, and then leaving a link to WP:STALEDRAFT at what would then be an empty space in the WP:WikiProject Abandoned Drafts page. I would also add a link (perhaps as a hatnote) from WP:STALEDRAFT to WP:WikiProject Abandoned Drafts. Power to your elbow, if you take that up.
If in doubt about how to proceed, then pinging other members of WP:WikiProject Abandoned Drafts would seem to be a good move. Zazpot (talk) 21:50, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
There's a discussion open about this subject at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#A new wish: no drafts in sandboxes and your input there is welcome. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 22:11, 11 March 2018 (UTC)