Sources from #Islam will benefit #Wikidata

With currently over 12,000,000 "items" registered in Wikidata, most of them registered with bots there is a monumental task waiting to be undertaken. It is adding sources to all this information stated as facts.

In Wikipedia it is policy that facts stated in an article need to be supported by sources. It is also a matter of principle that Wikipedia itself can not be considered a source itself. Stating that something is true because Wikipedia says so is good for more than a smile. Oh and, there is not one Wikipedia, there are over 280 Wikipedias; enough reasons to snicker.

One of the things people are taught in Islamic schools is that they should rely on the original sources. When something of a religious nature is stated, it should be supported by what can be read in the original sources of the Islamic faith. In Wikidata many people and subjects that have to do with Islam have found their way as a fact that is not sourced. They include genealogical information like the one shown above or similar information about Q9458.

Having sourced information is important because some information present in Wikipedia is certainly wrong. Having incorrect information in Wikidata is even worse because it may present information used in 280 Wikipedias.

Bringing together people who know the relevant sources, who are willing to learn about Wikidata and edit its information is something you can do in a workshop. Organising a Wikidata workshop together with a mosque are two novelties; as far as I am aware there have been no workshops organised around Wikidata and, organising a Wiki workshop with a mosque is something I have not heard about either.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Lua template wanted for use of #Wikidata in #Wikipedia

Denny said some magical words to me;

• you can convert a list of Wikipedia wiki links to links to Wikidata using Lua. 
• you can check if there is an article on THIS Wikipedia
• you will show the Wikidata data when there is no article

He even said that it is not hard to do and provided this as a pointer.

I am preparing a Wikidata workshop and I would be REALLY pleased when this list was available doing all the song and dance mentioned above. There are so many other lists that could benefit from this as well. 

I am convinced that such functionality will motivate people to write stubs and articles on subjects that are important to them. I am also convinced that it is a powerful incentive to create data that accomplishes things like this.

Thanks,

     GerardM

#Wikipedia lists could fall back to #Wikidata

I have been playing with Wikidata and it is really good fun. I find many uses for it and some of them have to be tweaked a bit to be even better. Take for instance a list of popes. There is a list with articles on the English Wikipedia for each of them. There are so many popes, that it is obvious that many Wikipedias do not have the list and certainly not articles to all of these popes.

Wikidata could come to the rescue. When a list is made up of values available in Wikidata and when the links to articles fall back to Wikidata, we are able to provide relevant information and, we have the perfect opportunity to suggest to our readers to write a stub or an article.

In effect such a list allows us to provide improved information by using the strength of Wikidata in any of the languages we support. When you think about such a list, it is not much different from an info-box.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikipedia red links should link to #Wikidata

When a subject does not "merit" an article in Wikipedia, it does not follow that the same subject is not of value in Wikidata. Consider for instance the son of a famous person who died at the age of three. He completes the list of all the children of that person something that is definitely "a good thing" in Wikidata.

It is certainly true that many subjects that "merit" an article do not have an article. There may be an article in one language and not in another. Wikidata has the option to add a label for such an article as a place holder and while it has not been written it can show nicely red on a disambiguation page. The point here is that it is legitimate for lists and disambiguation pages to have red links. When such lists are completed in Wikidata they can easily be translated to other languages and provide basic information that may be of interest.

The red links in the list of Muhammeds are both kings of the Sayfawa dynasty. Sadly they are not even all the kings called Muhammed who are part of the Sayfawa dynasty with a red link. Just consider what would happen when disambiguation lists are presented from Wikidata; it makes it easier to start articles because relevant information may be available thanks to work done in another language.

When you consider the options, all "red links" could be known to Wikidata. As a result you can complete all lists without having to write articles and, you will deal with disambiguation issues sooner rather than later and, why have wikilinks when integrity is better maintained in Wikidata anyway?
Thanks,
      GerardM

Spouse does not translate

I love #Wikidata, it gets so many things right. At the same time it fails by design. Consider; there is this article about a woman. In English she may have a spouse. In translation there is a problem; because the spouse has a spouse and it is a different word depending on the gender of the person involved.

This is the kind of problem that has been solved for the MediaWiki software. It means that you consider the sex of the person involved. Applying this principle on Wikidata is possible because we do register if a person is male or female.

It seems obvious; sex matters. In many languages you address people based on their sex. As long as Wikidata is not able to address this issue, it is broken. When this is intentional, it is broken by design.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#OmegaWiki works and so can #Wikidata

OmegaWiki provides functionality that is on the agenda for Wikidata. The OmegaWiki community has ALWAYS wanted to be a Wikimedia project.

What it already provides is:

• links to Wikipedia articles in other languages when the article does NOT exist in the preferred language
• links to a commons category associated with a concept
• a picture painting the thousand words associated with the concept

Yes, it is quite shocking; it also provides multi lingual dictionary support. OmegaWiki has even been described in a book on the development of lexicography.

Both OmegaWiki and Wikidata are "right in front of us" and, the functionality described above is imho "right for us". The challenge we face is to do something that is "shockingly rare"; meet halfway.

The road towards such a meeting could be:

• Adopt OmegaWiki by the WMF in a labs kinda construction
• Create the logical requirements of OmegaWiki data in Wikidata
• Convert the OmegaWiki content to Wikidata technology
• See how it fits in the big picture
• Make it fit in the big picture

We do not need much talk and, the amount of work needed is relatively minor. The benefits are legion because even when all the OmegaWiki data is not used in the end, the lessons learned will be.

Thanks,

      GerardM

Machine translation for #Wikipedia

The Wikimedia Foundation suggests that machine translation is the kind of infrastructure that makes sense to it. Given what it aims to do: making knowledge available to everyone, this makes perfect sense. A lot of translation has already been going on in order to fill many gaps in the many Wikipedias and machine translations were often an important part of this.

One of the arguments why the WMF could enter the fray is that it has something to add. It does have monetary reserves but more importantly it has several resources that may make a difference. The biggest two are Wikipedia itself and the other are its awesome communities.

When translating a Wikipedia article, the concepts that are specific to a subject are likely to be found in that article. Similarly when such concepts have their own article, they will contain a similar set of concepts. Combine this with a multi-lingual dictionary build with Wikidata technology along OmegaWiki lines and it will be relatively easy to find the corresponding expressions in articles in different languages on the same subject.

The point here is that the meanings of words do not exist in a vacuum.

When such concepts have been identified and linked to Wikipedia articles and dictionary meanings it becomes possible to help people understand a text in a different language by providing native language support.

<GRIN> I know Erik Moeller has a lot of experience in this field and I know mutual friends are quite interested to help </GRIN>

Relevant is that we do not have to invent something new; it has been part and parcel of things we have done before. The difference is that we gained in experience and, technology has evolved as well.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikivoyage #statistics revisited

I am happy to report that many of the issues with several statistics have been resolved. The most visible improvement is that the page views for Wikivoyage are now available and updated on a daily basis. When you check out these statistics you notice that Wikivoyage got the most attention when it was started. Now in the fourth month we can notice some stabilisation.

The latest Wikivoyage projects in Hebrew and Ukrainian are now included as well and it will be interesting to follow how they will do in the future.

I am really happy that many issues have been resolved. If anything, statistics are trusted because of the consistency and quality of the presentation. When you follow developments regularly you get a feeling for the underlying data. Waiting for the resolution of what seems like cosmetic issues destroys that feeling.
Thanks,
     GerardM