Hoi,

Labels are a priority and do need attention but descriptions do not even though they are a mess. Descriptions are often added by bot and they are based on an initial set of statements. They are typically not revisited and as statements are added, it becomes increasingly obvious how ill they represent the item involved.

It is an old argument but here we go again. The automated descriptions as developed by Magnus are superior. Like the bot generated descriptions they are based on statements but they are generated as and when they are needed and they do allow for other languages. For me the most crucial part is that when I need disambiguation, I add statements to good effect. Yes, you may want descriptions in a dump but when an algorithm exists, it is possible to run it at dump time as well. My point is that technical issues do not trump usefulness. As it is a lot of time is wasted on something that is obviously below par, something that does not even work well for English.

Thanks,

GerardM

On 22 February 2017 at 01:04, Nick Wilson (Quiddity) <nwilson@wikimedia.org> wrote:

On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 9:59 PM, Smolenski Nikola <smolensk@eunet.rs> wrote:
> Citiranje "Nick Wilson (Quiddity)" <nwilson@wikimedia.org>:
>> 2) Translation
>> I also agree that a machine-translation /suggestion/ or /hint/ would be a
>> nice option. The main concern is users who don't understand the limitations
>> of machine-translation and whom must resist the urge to just copy&paste.
>
> It should be possible, perhaps even preferred, to show translation of the most
> common descriptions, done on translatewiki. Thus all the descriptions like
> "Wikipedia disambiguation page", "Wikimedia category" etc could be visible in
> all languages.
>

I think this (good) example is for a slightly different feature, which
means that there are 2 distinct feature-requests:

-----

1) For unique item descriptions (the main focus of this mailing list
thread), we want to find a way to "suggest" descriptions to editors,
based on machine-translations of existing descriptions in other
languages.

1a) This could be a new task in phabricator? (per discussion in this thread)

1b) (Probably a very-long-term goal?) This could also perhaps be
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T64695 "Draft a computer-assisted
translation system for Wikidata labels/descriptions"
which discusses the scaling problems, and suggests that we might
EVENTUALLY want semi-automated description updates, at least in some
items, similar to how Reasonator works.
I suspect it would be best to keep those 2 ideas separate, hence I
suggest filing a new task for (1a).

------

2) A way for generic description translations, to be automatically
added to some items.

2a) For very common & wikimedia-focused descriptions, this seems to be
/periodically/ handled by bots.
E.g. for Disambiguation items, it looks like User:MilanBot currently
handles this task, for example:
* https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q260478&action=history
* https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Requests_for_permissions/Bot/MilanBot
E.g. for Category items, it looks like ValterVBot currently handles
this task, for example:
* https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q6939670&diff=198113824&oldid=197219107
* https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Requests_for_permissions/Bot/ValterVBot

This task, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T139912 seems to track
the idea of properly automating it all, and it links to an onwiki
discussion that has many more details. I don't understand the
technical discussions, or current state of development, enough to even
attempt to summarize.

2b) For other common descriptions, these translations all seem to be
manually added?
E.g. for items with the description "scientific journal article" or
"scientific article".
* https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28510879 and
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28579322 and
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28298612 and I think thousands more?
However, these are probably not a best practice that we want to
encourage, per https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Description and per
some of the descriptions in other languages being more precise (e.g.
"vedecký článok (publikovaný 2009-01)" ).
Therefore, this (2b) cluster probably belongs more with the (1a/1b)
set of feature-requests, and should not be mass-replicated across
Wikidata.

I hope that's mostly accurate...
Quiddity

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