Hoi,
To start of, results from the past are no indications of results in the
future. It is the disclaimer insurance companies have to state in all their
adverts in the Netherlands. When you continue and make it a "theological"
issue, you lose me because I am not of this faith, far from it. Wikidata is
its own project and it is utterly dissimilar from Wikipedia.To start of
Wikidata has been a certified success from the start. The improvement it
brought by bringing all interwiki links together is enormous.That alone
should be a pointer that Wikipedia think is not realistic.
To continue, people have been importing data into Wikidata from the start.
They are the statements you know and, it was possible to import them from
Wikipedia because of these interwiki links. So when you call for sources,
it is fairly save to assume that those imports are supported by the quality
of the statements of the Wikipedias and if anything, that is also where
they typically fail because many assumptions at Wikipedia are plain wrong
at Wikidata. For instance a listed building is not the organisation the
building is known for. At Wikidata they each need their own item and
associated statements.
Wikidata is already a success for other reasons. VIAF no longer links to
Wikipedia but to Wikidata. The biggest benefit of this move is for people
who are not interested in English. Because of this change VIAF links
through Wikidata to all Wikipedias not only en.wp. Consequently people may
find through VIAF Wikipedia articles in their own language through their
library systems.
So do not forget about Wikipedia and the lessons learned. These lessons are
important to Wikipedia. However, they do not necessarily apply to Wikidata
particularly when you approach Wikidata as an opportunity to do things in a
different way. Set theory, a branch of mathematics, is exactly what we
need. When we have data at Wikidata of a given quality.. eg 90% and we have
data at another source with a given quality eg 90%, we can compare the two
and find a subset where the two sources do not match. When we curate the
differences, it is highly likely that we improve quality at Wikidata or at
the other source. With a proper workflow and an iterative approach to
multiple sources, we will spend time adding sources and improving quality.
This is more productive than religiously adding sources for every
statement. It also brings us better information in less time. I hope this
will help people understand that Wikidata is not Wikipedia and, that is a
good thing.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 24 November 2015 at 00:37, Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
some resposnes to Leila comments
1. Its not a disaster but it is a serious concern, we know from past
experiences that it goes to the heart of the projects long term
credibility, Countless hours and funds have gone into redressing Wikipedias
reputation and still after 8 years of doing this we get bagged, we are
still answering these questions. why send Wikidata done that track when we
all understand the importance of referencing or in more theological
perspective "if we cant learn from history, why do we spend so many
resources recording history"
2. referencing is a very valuable thing for all data, that should be a
starting point for the spectrum and Wikidata, rather than a goal or end
point. Wikipeidas still have unreferenced material 15 years after it
started
3. I'd disagree if the data isnt referenced then its of no value,
Wikipedias are a better place to look
4.Wikipedia reference isnt ideal but it is better than nothing, providing
that reference is to a permanent link rather than just a article at least
then if the information is changed there is some ability to recover the
original source. In general a circular reference is a bad out come
5.People need to able to trust all data in WikiData, otherwise they just
wont use it because as Wikidata expands the same PR firms, interest groups
which have seen so many of WP issues will gravitate to the easier to
manipulate WikiData
Lets build something based on the lessons learnt on Wikipedia over the last
15 years rather than duplicate those missteps
On 24 November 2015 at 06:18, Leila Zia <leila(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi Andreas,
On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 1:15 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Moreover, I was somewhat surprised to learn the
other day that,
apparently,
over 80 percent of Wikidata statements are either
unreferenced or only
referenced to a Wikipedia:
https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Citing_as_a_public_serviceā¦
That seems like a recipe for disaster, given that Wikidata feeds the
Google
Knowledge Graph and Bing Satori to some extent.
Thoughts?
Here are my thoughts:
1) No, it's not a recipe for disaster. :-) I expand below.
2) People sit at the different parts of the spectrum when it comes to the
issues around Wikidata references. What almost all these people have in
common is that they know having references is a very valuable thing for
Wikidata (or any other knowledge base for that matter).
3) As a researcher, as long as the data is in Wikidata, with or without a
reference, I'm already some steps ahead. If there is no reference, I
have a
starting point to look for a reference for that
specific value, and in
that
process, I may find conflicting data with new
references. For a project
in
a growing stage, these are opportunities, not
blockers.
4) I hear a lot of sensitivity about referencing Wikidata claim values to
Wikipedia. I hear people's concerns (having loops in referencing
mechanisms
is not good) but I do not consider the existence
of Wikipedia references
an
issue and I certainly prefer a Wikipedia
reference over no reference,
especially if the date the information was extracted at is also tracked
somewhere in Wikidata. Giving information to the researcher that the data
has come from Wikipedia will give him/her a head-start about where to
continue the search.
5) I see a need to give the users of open data a chance to use data with
more knowledge and control. For example, if you are an app developer, you
should be able to figure out relatively easily what data in Wikidata you
can fully trust, and what data you may want to skip using in your app. At
the moment, some part of the community considers a value with a non-
Wikipedia reference approved/monitored by a human as trustworthy (this is
no written rule, I'm summarizing my current understanding based on
discussions with some of the Wikidata community members, including myself
:-). But, among other things, the reference in Wikidata may not be a
trustworthy reference. We should surface how much trust one should have
in
the values in Wikidata to the end-user.
What is amazing is: There are many great things one can do based on the
data that is being gathered in Wikidata. We should all work together to
improve that data, but we should also acknowledge that our attention is
split across many projects (this is definitely the case for me), and as a
result, we will be seeing steady and smooth improvements in Wikidata, and
not sudden and very fast improvements. We need to stay curious, excited,
committed, and patient. :-)
Leila
Disclaimer: These are my personal views about references in Wikidata, and
not necessarily the views of my team or the Wikimedia Foundation. :-)
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