Sunday, August 31, 2014

#Wikidata - my #workflow enriching Wikidata using tools

As I have other commitments, I do not have the same amount of time to do what I used to do. The workflow I use is now quite stable and dependable so I am happy to publish it. It is fairly easy and obvious. You can do this too.

Important are objectives; mine are:
  • make Wikidata more informative by adding relevant statements
  • Provide the basis for further usage of data
My workflow is based on the people who died in 2014. This is reported in categories. ToolScript informs me about all items that do not have a date of death. Every line represents an item; typically they are human but there are also horses and other critters included. I click the Reasonator icon and, the links to articles provide me with the first lines of that article. Typically the date of birth and death are included. I copy this text when it is not English and use Google translate. From the translated text I copy the dob dod. I click on the Qnumber in the Reasonator and add these dates in Wikidata.

The ToolScript can easily point to 2013 or any other year. Obviously you can make your own script to do whatever.

Once somebody is a registered dead, I look at the article for interesting categories. They can be anything from "Alma mater university x" to "player of Whatever FC". Most interesting are the implied facts NOT reported from the dearly departed. Any category may contain hundreds of other items for whom we are not aware about said fact. The first thing to do is to document said category, this category can be on any wiki. Documenting is done by including a statement with "is a list of" "human" and have a qualifier like "alma mater" "University X". Reasonator will show at most the first 500 entries of the resulting query.

When many entries are still missing, Autolist2 is the tool to use. From the Reasonator page of the category, copy the name of the category, the P and the Q value to the appropriate spot. Do not forget to make sure that the right Wiki has been selected (en in the example). Consider the depth; depth 0 is safest. Make sure that the WDQ mode is on "AND" and press "Run". This will generate the list that is selected for processing. Check the list and copy the P and Q values to the control box. Click "Process commands" when you feel comfortable with the results. Once the process starts, you will find the changes in the Reasonator page for the item you add statements for, in the example of the illustration it is the New Zealand Order of Merit

For best results most entries are often in the "local language" like this example for people who work(ed) at the university of Innsbruck.

With a workflow like this you are more effective. The work is documented and slowly but surely Wikidata becomes truly informative.
Thanks,
     GerardM

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