Well, yes. Was your clue the bit where it said English-language wikipedia?

Wikiproject-based things are incredibly difficult to generalize because they're so dependent on project-specific nuances and setups. Wikidata will change that, I hope, but it's not there yet.

On Tuesday, 13 January 2015, Ricordisamoa ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org wrote:

Il 13/01/2015 23:24, James Hare ha scritto:

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(Standard apology for cross-posting.)

Greetings everyone!

I am pleased to announce a new project, WikiProject X, funded by a Wikimedia Foundation Individual Engagement Grant. WikiProject X's goal is to improve the experience of WikiProjects, which are subject-area (or goal-oriented) collaborative spaces on the English Wikipedia. By making WikiProjects easier to use and maintain, it will be easier to build sub-communities of like-minded people, giving editors a sense of community on a huge and daunting website like Wikipedia. This includes mechanisms for recruiting new participants and encouraging the creation of safe spaces where editors, new and experienced alike, can feel like they can participate in discussions without fear of intimidation or jargon.

The project will begin with some research, both qualitative research in the form of interviews and case studies, and quantitative research based on Wikipedia’s database. Our focus will be on WikiProjects that have been successful in organizing editors, and learning more about what makes them work. Based on this research, we will develop new tools and interfaces that make WikiProjects easier to use and easier to maintain. Please note that this is an opt-in program for WikiProjects; no WikiProject will be required to make changes.

I would like to invite the community to check out our new page on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_X (shortcut WP:WPX). There, you can share your experiences with WikiProjects and sign up to become a pilot tester. Community participation is crucial for the success of this project, and the more voices we hear, the better.

If you want to sign up for more updates, sign up for our newsletter here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_X/Newsletter.

Please let me know if you have any questions. I am very much looking forward to working with everyone on making this project succeed!

Cheers, James Hare Project Manager, WikiProject X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_X _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe

Sounds like just another enwiki-specific thing.

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On 14 January 2015 at 12:33, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:

Hoi, How is Wikidata not here yet ? Thanks, GerardM

Well at the london meetup we tried poking at it with regards to coins. It tends not to be aware when things are currency units (pounds crown florin) hasn't heard of the likes of long cross pennies let alone individual coin mintings (the exception presumably being ones notable enough to have Wikipedia articles).

It does of course know a fair bit about bitcoin.

2015-01-14 17:04 GMT+02:00 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:

Hoi, When Wikipedia does not have articles on a subject, what do you do... Same for Wikidata..

So again, how is Wikidata not there yet ?

It just doesn't have the information required, apparently. It also might not have the structure required; I found the process for adding properties is slow (although not that painful)

Let's not turn Wikidata into the proverbial hammer. Let the grantees organize themselves as they see fit, and if the result is worthy, I'm sure they will also find a way to integrate it with Wikidata.

Strainu

By the way Q5869386 is really rather funny. For some reason your bots think that [[History of the English penny (1066–1154)]] is equivalent to [[History of the English penny]].

-- geni

I am now slightly more educated than I was this morning on the topic of the history of English currency. Did everyone else know that there are actually at least 8 distinct periods of penny? Naturally enough, there's a series of [English] Wikipedia articles about them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /Penny_(English_coin)#Pennies_by_period

And - in a desperate attempt to bring this thread BACK TO THE POINT - they, and over 3,500 other articles, are coordinated by Wikiproject Numismatics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Numismatics

Because if its clear scope, detailed academic resources, dedicated interest-group, and relatively small wiki-community size, this is the kind of wikiproject that would probably be a fantastic candidate for testing some of the ideas worked on with 'Wikiproject X'. Wikiprojects that want to sign up as testers can go here: https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_X/Pilots

Wikiprojects are a very important and long-standing part of the community infrastructure of Wikipedias - and (IMHO) hold the key to helping support new editors through the crucial first 20 newbie edits. However I don't believe they have EVER received any specific attention about how they can be supported more (by the WMF, Chapters, with grants, software features, bugs fixed, etc etc). This is a fantastic opportunity to support on-wiki collaboration.

If anyone has ideas for how Wikiprojects can be improved. List them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_X To subscribe to the newsletter, go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_X/Newsletter

p.s. Yes, this is English-wikipedia focused because the volunteer who applied for the grant is an English-speaker... It wouldn't be very useful for the WMF to fund grants for volunteers to work in languages that they don't understand...

On 14 January 2015 at 15:36, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:

Well lets take a fairly straightforward coin. The British Florin. Hardly obscure it was in circulation for over a century in one of the world's largest economies. You won't find it through wikidata.

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8564001 was created on 28 March 2013‎ and is found in the left-hand navigation on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florin_%28English_coin%29 as a link called "Wikdata item".

On 16 January 2015 at 07:18, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:

On 15 January 2015 at 21:29, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:

...

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8564001 was created on 28 March 2013‎ and is found in the left-hand navigation on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florin_%28English_coin%29 as a link called "Wikdata item".

So we're back to the English Wikipedia being the only functional method of navigating wikidata.

No, but since you'd had difficulty finding that item, I thought I'd show you one easy way to do so. I found it by typing the word "Florin" into the search box on Wikdiata.

Of course whats really going to mess things up is that the florin isn't a single coin but in fact a whole series of them. While it makes sense for the english wikipedia to bash them all together it makes less sense for wikidata to do so.

So fix it.

While Wikidata, which is just over two years old, has far more complete coverage than Wikipedia did in 2003, there's still work to do. You can edit it. It's a wiki.

On 14/01/15 04:01, Keegan Peterzell wrote:

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 5:40 PM, Ricordisamoa ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org wrote:

...

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Sounds like just another enwiki-specific thing.

​That's a reasonable assumption. I'm only guessing, but I think the project is based on the English Wikipedia because that's the area where the grantee(s) are most familiar. I wouldn't want them to go mucking around on projects they are not familiar with first.

I'm going to assume that while this is initially en.wp focused, the grantees are willing to learn from and share what they learn with the other projects. One would think they would appreciate the outreach from other communities, learning from each other is always a Good Thing™.​

This. For our project, things enwp users would never even think of may prove to be the most useful, but as always, we do want this to be able to scale. Such will probably show up more in any tool implementations that show up later, but the less hard-coded those things are, the more flexibility they can have later, which means they will be more useful for everyone down the line - english wikipedians and whoever else as well.

A lack of flexibility has happened with a lot of other tools before and it's not something we want to repeat. We'll see what happens, though.

-I