[Wiki Loves Monuments] Fwd: Moving monuments database to Wikidata

Jane Darnell jane023 at gmail.com
Fri Jul 31 08:29:25 UTC 2015


I agree with Nicolas on this, Romaine. WLM is by nature a place where
newbies create userids on Commons, not on Wikipedia. For true Commonists, a
step from Commons to Wikidata is easier than the step from Commons to
Wikipedia.

On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 9:32 AM, Nicolas VIGNERON <
vigneron.nicolas at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2015-07-31 3:25 GMT+02:00 Romaine Wiki <romaine.wiki at gmail.com>:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> In this discussion I see multiple things being suggested, or maybe only
>> thought of.
>> * Moving the monument database to Wikidata: for the 2015 edition it will
>> not be possible because of the amount of workload. If it is possible for
>> the 2016 edition I do not know, but keep in mind that there is more needed
>> then only moving some data from location A to location B. There is a
>> complete infrastructure behind it that needs to work. Let's not think too
>> light hearted about this, the infrastructure is vital and crucial.
>>
>
> True.
>
> * Lists of monuments maintained in one place: sorry to say, but to get
>> this completely maintained only in Wikidata is a fairytale. Not because it
>> is not possible, but because there are people involved and there are
>> requirements set for articles/lists by communities. From the Wikidata
>> perspective it sounds perhaps ideal to maintain it in one place, but then
>> the (whole) Wikipedia perspective is missing. Then you can say that you
>> edit Wikipedia a lot, but then you missed the point. There is a big clash
>> between some users who have the Wikidata perspective who think a lot of
>> codes in Wikipedia articles is okay, and users from the Wikipedia
>> perspective who think all those codes in articles are not okay. Wikipedia
>> is strongly built from the perspective that anyone can edit articles, and
>> this is something that made Wikipedia big and is often considered an
>> important characteristic of Wikipedia. Of course you can say that users can
>> edit Wikidata when there are codes in Wikipedia, but that is thought too
>> simple for multiple reasons. There will be communities that want to choose
>> themselves which photo they want to show in their monument list (instead
>> the photo from Wikidata), many descriptions of monuments in the list are
>> altered and have footnotes and internal links, many descriptions and other
>> fields are edited/expanded/updated, while Wikidata shows a different text
>> or Wikidata has not the possibility to contain certain complex data. And
>> the majority of users on Wikipedia experience Wikidata as too difficult to
>> easily work with (seeing the Dutch community). (These are just a few issues
>> of a lot more. And this is of course not specifically WLM, but generic.)
>>
>
> « completely maintained only in Wikidata » is maybe a fairytale but for me
> the goal is more : « mainly centralised on Wikidata ».
>
> Did you take a look at the example on frwp I gave?
> The french community already use Wikidata (for monuments, for people,
> etc.). Wikidata are *never* forced on frwp (that's a very bad idea and bad
> practice), you can always use a local value instead of the wikidata value.
> Sure it's not always perfect - and it took a long time and a lot of
> explanations and efforts - and some frwp users are still grumbling and
> complaining but globally it works fine. The grumblers leave the wikidatan
> in peace and even collaborate quite peacefully ;) No clash here on frwp.
>
>
>> I think that the ability to edit the lists in ways Wikidata can't handle,
>> is especially wanted on Wikipedias of the local language. At the same time
>> I think that we need to work to the situation that for example monuments
>> from the Netherlands can be shown on a list in the Japanese Wikipedia and
>> many others. Maintaining lists in 200+ Wikipedias is not possible I think,
>> so the idea of a centralised database is needed, but needs more thinking
>> about how this can work in practise.
>> Another issue there is, is that Wikipedia is built on being able to click
>> on top of the page and edit it without having to struggle with codes. Their
>> are and will be a lot of Wikipedias where it is not acceptable to put a
>> large amount of codes in the main namespace. A solution for that is simple,
>> like categories, lua, portals, etc automated lists need their own
>> namespace, like a list namespace. Then the article namespace remains freely
>> editable and at the same time the information of automated lists is
>> available in the local Wikipedia in the local language.
>>
>
> With Wikidata, there is actually less code visible in the article (and
> thanks to the VisualEditor it's even less visible).
>
> * Having all monuments in Wikidata: I am not sure if anyone mentioned
>> this, but this should be the first step and only when this is completed we
>> can think of further steps. And then I assume all the data of the database
>> can be added to Wikidata, I am not sure if this is possible. Nevertheless I
>> think all the monuments should have an item in Wikidata. For some countries
>> this is the case already, for most countries this seems not the case. For
>> these monuments in Wikidata we need to set some criteria. There are
>> multiple criteria to be set, but one of them is at least to have
>> **every** monument in Wikidata having a unique identifier.
>> Also all monuments in Wikidata need additional information to be able to
>> identify a monument in Wikidata as a monument on location. These include
>> address, coordinates, municipality or other administrative territorial
>> entity (this should be the lowest level possible), type of monument, and
>> more. And there are more criteria that need to be set before it can be used
>> worldwide.
>>
>> If it is not possible to set for every monument a unique ID, Wikidata is
>> not suitable for usage in Wiki Loves Monuments. A unique identifier for
>> each monument is crucial throughout the whole infrastructure, the
>> infrastructure has been built on this.
>>
>
> When there is no external ID, can't the QXXX ID of Wikidata items be used ?
>
>
>> * Lists, rows in lists, articles about an individual monument on
>> Wikipedia, categories on Commons and Wikidata items all need to be
>> connected with each other. I think it is already possible for a part in
>> Wikidata. However, this is far from ready to be used. Adding information to
>> Wikidata is great, and that is what many people do, but there is a high
>> need for connecting Wikidata items with for example categories on Commons.
>> For any future tooling, scripts, gadgets, etc, this is needed in general,
>> but specific for WLM too. The importance of this part is so much
>> underestimated.
>>
>
> True.
>
> For instances, on the 18k items about french monument right now on
> Wikidata, around 6k don't have a Commons category (P373). But mostly
> because there is no Commons categories, so we're creating them by hand when
> needed and appropriate; and again it takes time, a lot of time !
>
>
> But it's not because it's difficult and complex that it can't be done!
>
> In many ways, I find Wikidata easier than Wikipedia and that Wikidata will
> make life easier for Wikipedians.
>
> Cdlt, ~nicolas
>
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