Jan Dittrich (WMDE)

Happy to share the typical things I've done on Wikidata that are not "Wikidata Game" or "Mix-n-match" unless you want that as part of your study too.

In general, I have worked on cleaning up the firearms ontology, moving things from instances to subclasses, and then scraping categories from en.wp using Petscan and massively putting them in the right subclasses in Wikidata, and then adding English labels to items that exist in other languages only.

As for tools, I also have developed a script for Google Spreadsheets that works in conjunction with the Wikipedia and Wikidata Tools for Google Spreadsheets, so that I can get a high level view of certain subjects and their article quality in EN.WP, and see what the Wikidata coverage looks like. I've shared this script with Women in Red (@Rosiestep), Women Scientists (@Keilana), Library user groups (@Gamaliel) and also the Auckland War Memorial Museum Wikimedian in Residence to look at sets of articles to assess quality, and then generate Quickstatements to help fill in descriptions, or other properties that need work. I've demo'ed this at Wikimania recently in a Lightning Talk:

https://youtube.com/DgfRD9chgcQ?t=1h9m43s

I also use ORES to evaluate article quality as part of this, but that goes beyond the Wikidata interest. :)

That sounds interesting! Would it make sense to you to do a hangout/skype/jitsi to show me how you do things like ontology cleaning and label adding?

If that does not make sense (but you still like to help), stepwise-ish descriptions of how-you-do-tasks are also very much appreciated! (As example, some editors helped us with that for list generation)

Definitely. If I can also record it and make it public, that'd be great. I'd been planning to do it "twitch" style for a while, and this would allow us to do both things at once.

Yes, I would be happy as well with twitch style and public sharing! Do you have a rough time/date in mind? (If easier for coordination, you can also mail to jan.dittrich AT wikimedia.de)

Hi,

I think we did not get around talking – if you still like to, we can find some time and also record the session.

Ooops, that was my private account. I should not mess up the different browsers.

Anyway, text remains the same:

I think we did not get around talking – if you still like to, we can find some time and also record the session.

In case we don't get around to it, I'll document my main concerns:

1. Unintuitive and easy-to-miss buttons. (e.g. having to scroll all the way to the end of current statements to add a new statement; having to click edit be shown the possibility of removing)
2. No mobile editing except labels. It is impossible -- or at least I completely failed to find how -- to edit/add a claim on an item in mobile view. I am forced to switch to Desktop view to do any editing beyond labels.
3. autocomplete sometimes doesn't happen; perhaps it's just network issues, but it would be user-friendly to have a key combination or button to *force* auto-completion right now, or force a re-try in case the automatic one went idle forever.
4. Additional suggestions of properties based on statistics. It seems Wikidata runs out of properties to propose at some point.
5. A way to dismiss a suggestion -- e.g. "date/place of death" for living people: I want to be able to dismiss it as irrelevant once and not see it suggested again, if not ever, then at least for, say, 90 days. That way I can keep looking at *relevant* suggested properties to add to an item I'm describing.
6. Some indication on how to customize the label/desc box. It is far from obvious that the User's babel box controls it, and far from obvious what a babel box looks like, for people who have never had one. Indeed, it would be best defined as a preference rather than (or at least in addition to) a babel box.
7. Useful gadgets like "statement filter" enabled by default.
8. More visibility for constraints on property values when actually editing an item. It seems most validation is done post-factum, but it could save work and educate contributors if there were some visibility for the existing constraints *in real time*.

That's it for now. :)

Hello Ijon, sorry for my late reply. Thanks for the list, this is very useful.

Since we chatted in Montreal already, I would interview others first. I will consider your listed concerns, though, and, if you like, ask for your input after I interviewed some others (Then, I probably have new questions I did not have in Montreal)

I talked to some other users in the meantime and would now have some new questions – If you have some time, it would be great to talk with you again!.

In general, I work on artists and their works. For artists I generally use Mix-n-Match after I add someone. For paintings I do a lot with art catalogs: estate auction sales, temporary exhibitions, artist monographs, and institution guides and I work a lot on Commons. I use several tools to help manage categories (hotcat/cat-a-lot) and cross-checking (petscan). So at any given moment I am probably looking for a painting somewhere. Through data ingestion, we may have items on Wikidata with no image, and on Commons an image with no item. Going through any "highlights" art catalog, generally about half of it is either already on Wikidata or on Commons, but I do a lot of cross-wiki reconciliation and uploading to both Commons (using several shortcuts dumped into the basic uploader) and to Wikidata (using quick statements). For important painters, generally someone on some Wikipedia has already done a lot of work, so I will grab that and cross-reference it with what I am doing. Sometimes I will update them, once I have all the paintings illustrated. My biggest annoyance is grabbing an image from a website and uploading it to Commons with the same data that it needs to have on Wikidata. It is of course impossible to do from mobile and it's pretty tiresome with a desktop as well. The only reward are the lists themselves, which I put on Wikidata and Commons and eventually they get picked up by other sites. Would be happy to chat about it.

That sounds very interesting and your comment is already very helpful for me. Would it make sense to you to do a hangout/skype/jitsi somewhere in the next two weeks to tell me more details about your work? (Mornings in CET usually work good for me, but I can try to accommodate other times, too). Alternatively, I could also ask questions via mail.

Sure no problem - I am based in the Netherlands, so same time preferences. Email works too, since I can send you links to look at. I would have dumped a few in here, but I don't know how with this liquid thread thing.

Great! What about this Friday (6th of Oct) at 10:00? Links in mails (or anywhere else) are great in addition.

I am not sure about the use here, but I think they can be added to selected sections via the chain icon below.

Friday is fine. I sent you a mail with some links.