Hello friends,

Wikidata is becoming too big to monitor individual data points continuously. Additionally, keeping Wikidata’s data in sync with external databases is hard and existing workflows are haphazard and one-off.

The Wikidata development team is interested in making it easier to compare Wikidata’s data with other databases in order to flag mismatches so that editors can more easily find and work on them.

We would love to talk to interested persons who've had some experience working on reconciling mismatches between Wikidata and other databases, to learn how you discover inconsistencies and the process you take to fix them, to enable us to understand your needs in the context of your work. The discussion will happen in English at a time depending on your availability.

If you’re interested in participating, please let me know and I will contact you as soon as possible with the next steps. In case a call may be difficult, we're also happy to receive your responses via text (I'll paste the questions below).

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.

Thank you so much for your support,

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Questions:
  1. Would you like to give us an overview on how you work with the data on Wikidata, specifically with a focus around comparing the data with other databases?  
  2. How do you precisely detect the mismatches? Can you guide us through the process? What kind of tools are you mainly using for comparing the data or supporting your work in this area?
  3. What are the valuable lessons that you learned or that you think we should know about?
  4. Given that there are many databases out there, how would you suggest we prioritize and focus and why?
  5. Is there any additional information (links, documentation, articles) that you would like to share? Are there people/organizations that you would suggest we reach out to? 
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Mohammed Sadat

Community Communications Manager for Wikidata/Wikibase

Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de