>From what you've described, this sounds like impressive detective work. (:
Pine On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 2:15 PM, Denny Vrandečić <[email protected]> wrote: > Just a little story I wanted to share. > > As I sometimes do, today I hit the “Random item” link on Wikidata. Almost > always I can find something I can improve, and almost always I learn some > random fun fact that I usually forget within a few moments. > > Today might be different. The link took me to Q14829494, the beetle > species Linsleychroma monnei. The species didn’t have much information on > it: it is a species, it had the genus, Linsleychroma. A link to the > Encyclopedia of Life and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. > There were links to seven different Wikipedia language editions - the usual > suspects for species, Cebuano, Indonesian, Waray-Waray, Minangkabau, > Vietnamese, Dutch and Swedish. If you’re around on Wikidata you recognize > this list as the language editions who have used bot created articles > extensively. > > The articles had hardly more information than Wikidata. Two of them had a > sentence about the larvae being damaging to wood, some included that the > species lives in Panama. They all listed the taxon author, Giesbert 1998, > which was missing in Wikidata, so I thought, let’s add that to Wikidata. > All I need is to find or create an item for Giesbert. Shouldn’t be too hard. > > OK. A bit of Googling and the name of Giesbert seems to be Edmund F. > Giesbert. Now there seems to be an actor that usually uses the name Ed > Gilbert, but who might have been born as Edmund Giesbert. Probably just a > coincidence. Although, English Wikipedia doesn’t say so anymore - that > changed in just two months ago, when the user fixed the typos on this page > and changed Giesbert to Gilbert. [ > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ed_Gilbert&diff=712105192&oldid=712096468 > ] > > I also reached out to the Raidohist, the editor who fixed the name > difference. > > But many other sources on the Web still claim that Gilbert’s name was > Giesbert. Unfortunately, many of them seem to be copies from Wikipedia, and > thus prone to citogenesis. IMDB doesn’t say Giesbert, but Gilbert, so do a > few of the other sources. So maybe Wikipedia sourced that error? > > Gilbert died in 1999 in Beverly Hills. Giesbert’s papers had no > institution, but listed his private address - this happens rarely, for > researchers without affiliation. Giesbert’s address? Beverly Hills. And > then stumbled upon this obituary for Frank Hovore [ > http://oldsite.the-signal.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=33168&format=print], > mentioning that Frank’s old friend of thirty years, Edmund Giesbert, had > died in 1999. > > Are Gilbert and Giesbert the same person? Was the actor who voiced in a > number of Disney’s shows and played in Dallas and Knight Rider, the same > person describing Linsleychroma monnei and other bugs and beetles? > > Wikidata also has a number of identifiers for Gilbert, including for the > Library of Congress and VIAF - and finally, the Library of Congress seems > to give the best clue: “Edmund F. Giesbert, educ. at the Univ. of Chicago; > works in the film, TV and radio industries in Los Angeles, and pursues the > study of Coleoptera (Cerambycidae) as a serious avocation.” > Based on that, I decided to merge the newly created Gilbert into the > long-existing Giesbert. > > If I am wrong - which I might easily be - feel free to fix it. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikidata mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata > >
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