Thursday, January 12, 2017

#Wikidata - Clare Hollingworth and #sources

Mrs Hollingworth was a famous journalist. She recently passed away and as I often do, I added content to the Wikidata item of the person involved.

Information like awards are something I often add and it was easy enough to establish that Mrs Hollingworth received a Hannen Swaffer Award in 1962. I found a source for the award and I had my confirmation.

The Wikipedia article has it that "She won the James Cameron Award for Journalism (1994)." There is however no source and I can find a James Cameron lecture and award but Mrs Hollingworth is not noted as receiving this award; it is Ed Vulliamy.

People often say that Wikipedia is not a source. The problem is that for Wikidata it often is. Particularly in the early days of Wikidata massive amounts of data were lifted off the Wikipedias and it is why there is so much initial content to build upon.

When you work from sources, you find an issue with the Wikipedia content. My source does not know about Mr Paul Foot either. Mrs Lyse Doucet does have a Wikipedia article but she is not linked in the Wikipedia list.

To truly get to the bottom of issues like these takes research and, I am willing nor able to do this for each and every subject that I touch. It is impossible to work on all the issues that exist because of everything that I did. I have over 2,1 million edits on Wikidata. What I do is make a start and I am happy to be condemned for the work that I did, work that does have issues but they are all there to be solved someday.
Thanks,
      GerardM

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