Hoi,
Thanks for your reply. There is one big issue that you do not address and,
it is best explained using a Wikipedia "best practice". The best practice
is that a town, a village whatever is known to be in the next
level "administrative territorial entities". This is done properly for the
first world. Where Wikidata does not hold data, as it often does, it cannot
help in info boxes but what I find is that the data of the Wikipedia is
wrong for more than 6% when I add information.
It does not matter that the information is fractured; coming from many
sources. The data for Egyptian subdivisions is largely in Arabic. This is
not something I can curate but it is something that can be presented.
What does matter is that differences between Wikipedias and Wikidata are
not noticed. Of particular importance is where the data is biased or wrong.
Particularly where the data is wrong and is about "administrative
territorial entities", I have had push back because English Wikipedia was
said to be wrong [1]... My interpretation of the facts is that the German
article was better written but out of date.
In this mail thread, I raise the issue of differences between Wikipedias,
differences between projects and Wikidata. Particularly where the
data/articles are biased or wrong our quality suffers. When for a subject
the error rate is more than 6%, the error rate is more than can be expected
of human adding good faith information to a project. The data I am adding
at this time supports Wikipedia best practices. It is particularly intended
for the "minority languages" [2] but the quality of all our data will be
improved when we are aware of the differences and curate them everywhere.
This is distinctly different from the issue with Commons; its data is good
enough for its current use case but is what holds it back from becoming the
resource you goto because you can "find" what you are seeking.
In a nutshell our problem is that we work in an insular fashion. We do not
have ways to find the differences, the errors, the bias between our
projects. We could do, suggestions for a basic mechanism have been made.
Our quality suffers and it does not need to [3].
Thanks,
GerardM
[1] https://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2018/07/africagap-where-wikipedias-
collide.html
[2] https://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2018/07/africagap-support-for-
minority-languages.html
[3] https://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2016/01/wikipedia-lowest-hanging-
fruit-from.html
On 16 July 2018 at 05:41, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <
[email protected]> wrote:
> yes, it is an old issue, what you say it's right but I would be more
> optimistic.
> To summarize my view (I couls send you more information privately)
>
> 1. Wikidata largely reflected what Wikipedia indicated, and that was not
> the right way to make it grow, but that was also the past. At the moment,
> the reference of the content is increasing, the clean-up too. In some
> areas, wikidata items are also created before the wikipedia articles
> nowadays.
>
> 2. new tools are great and will do a lot, but it's users who do the real
> tricks. You have to start to bring local users to wikidata, show them how
> it can be used (automatic infoboxes, fast creation of stubs, automatic
> lists, detecing missing images). They will start to fix the issues,
> curating their wikipedia, wikidata and also indirectly influence the other
> ones.
>
> 3. IMHO, the wikidata ecosystem is not so bad, it could have more expert
> users with real knowledge of topics, but commons with millions of
> automatically imported files, and tons of poorly described and
> uncategorized images faces a much worse perspective. You need more tools
> there than on wikidata, at the moment, if you want to keep some balanced
> workflow. What is really missing on wikidata are mostly active projects to
> coordinate and catalyze the ongoing efforts. This one
> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Ancient_Greece made
> miracles, for example. But I couldn't find one about peer-reviewed
> researchers or photographers to name a few, at least in the past months.
> Investing on this aspect would not change the final situation on wikidata
> (that will be positive for me), but it would speed up the process. it will
> also influence much more the content on local wikis because it will bring
> content-related users closer together and increase their wikidata literacy
> with lower effort.
> 4. In the end, even with a good high quality wikidata platform, there will
> always be communities that will not integrated in wikidata massively... but
> that's also a good thing for pluralism. You can't assume that a discrepancy
> is always a clue for a mistake (I am sure the examples of your experience
> are, of course), on the long term some of them are simply effects of gray
> areas that need to wait to be resolved even at the level of the sources.
> Insome fields, such as taxonomy, there is some confusion and asymmetric
> organization of the content and will never be solved easily. But in the
> other areas they probably will.
> Alex
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Il Domenica 15 Luglio 2018 22:37, Gerard Meijssen <
> [email protected]> ha scritto:
>
>
> Hoi,
> Wikidata is a reflection of all the Wikimedia projects, particularly the
> Wikipedias. Both Wikidata and Wikipedia are secondary sources and when two
> Wikipedias have opposing information on singular information, it is a cop
> out to state both "opinions" on Wikidata and leave it at that.
>
> Given that Wikidata largely reflects what a Wikipedia indicates, it is
> important to curate such differences. The first thing to consider is are we
> interested at all in knowing about "false facts" and then how we can
> indicate differences to our editing and reading community.
>
> I have been editing about Africa for a long time now and I find that the
> content about Africa is woefully underdeveloped. Best Wikipedia practice
> has it that cities and villages are linked to "administrative territorial
> entities" like provinces and districts and I have added such relations from
> primary to secondary entities. Adding such information to villages and
> cities as well is too much for me. The basic principle is that I am being
> bold in doing so. I do relate to existing items and I have curated a lot of
> crap data so far. The result is that Wikidata in places differs
> considerably from Wikipedias, particularly the English Wikipedia.
>
> As topics like the ones about Africa are severely underdeveloped, just
> adding new data is a 100% improvement even when arguably adding sources is
> a good thing. By being bold, by starting from a Wikipedia as a base line,
> it is important to note that not adding sources is established practice in
> Wikidata.
>
> The issue I raise is that when "another" Wikipedia considers its
> information superior, it is all too easy to make accusations of adding
> "fake facts" particularly when it is not obvious that the "other" Wikipedia
> provides better information. To counter such insular behaviour, it becomes
> relevant to consider how we can indicate discrepancies between stated facts
> in any Wikimedia project vis a vis Wikidata. Obviously it would be
> wonderful when the total of all our projects are considered in a
> visualisation.
>
> Particularly when a subject is of little interest to our current editor
> community, the data in the Wikipedias and by inference in Wikidata is weak.
> Many of the subjects, Africa just as one example, are relevant to a public,
> both a reading and editing public, that we want to develop. Without tools
> that help us curate our differences we will rely on insular opinions and
> every project is only a part of what we aim to achieve in all our projects.
> We will have a hard time growing our audience.
>
> NB this is an old, old issue and it is not going away.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> https://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2016/01/wikipedia-lowest-hanging-
> fruit-from.html
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