User talk:Wittylama/Archive 1

Welcome to Wikidata, Wittylama!

Wikidata is a free knowledge base that you can edit! It can be read and edited by humans and machines alike, and you can help. Go to any item page now and add to this ever-growing database!
Need some help getting started? Here are some pages you can familarise yourself with:

• Wikidata:About - About the project.
• Wikidata:Introduction - Another introduction to the project.
• Help:Contents - The main help portal for editing and using the site.
• Wikidata:Project chat - Discussions about the project.

If you have any questions, please ask me on my talk page. If you want to try out editing, you can use the sandbox to try. Once again, welcome, and I hope you quickly feel comfortable here, and become an active editor for Wikidata.

Regards, --Jitrixis (talk | support my candidacy) 13:34, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Merging items

Hallo Wittylama,

If you were not already using it, you may want to check out the merge.js gadget for merging items. It has an option "Request deletion for extra items on RfD" to automatically nominate the page you are merging from for deletion. This way of nominating also makes it easier for the admins to process such requests. For support and other options you can check the help page about merging.

With regards, - cycŋ - (talk • contribs • logs) 14:55, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Updates in 'near' proposal

In Wikidata:Property_proposal/Place#near, there's a suggestion to use the property in a slightly different way than originally proposed. What do you think? Emw (talk) 13:56, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Enabled babel magic

Hi Liam, I took the liberty to enable babel magic for you so you see the properties and items in the languages you understand. The system doesn't seem to understand en-AU so I used en-N for that. Multichill (talk) 11:46, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

There is indeed magic for that the system doesn't seem to understand en-AU - yehaha yeehah, bonza mate! JarrahTree (talk) 14:57, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Q numbers not linked to existing articles

I am fascinated as to how you can build a Q id, which has no apparent article linked (that i can find anyways), you must tell me some time some where some how, how that works, is there an article in the making somewhere, or can you build a data q id which has no article created yet? you have me intrigued. JarrahTree (talk) 15:03, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi JarrahTree, I'm not sure I understand the question... Are you saying that it's unusual to create wikidata items that don't have a Wikipedia article associated with them? There's many many thousands of those... For example I'm currently working on this list - http://tools.wmflabs.org/multichill/painters/index_liam.php Which is Australian painters that are listed as the creator of a painting that has been imported from any one of the open datasets by the Sum of All Paintings project. The vast majority of those paintings ALSO doesn't have any associated Wikipedia article for them yet either. Wittylama (talk) 17:19, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

wow - a totally different perspective on wikidate I hadnt met yet, I always thought that data was responsive to what exists already on a wiki - sheesh a two way process - quite boggling, to think that data might actually contain stuff the slowbies out there in wiki project land havent caught up on yet. not enough days in a lifetime to think about that. roll on senility and 20 hour a day editing I say... cheers and tahnks for the xplanation! If I dont say so before then in another forum, have a safe christmas! JarrahTree (talk) 23:42, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I must say, JarrahTree, that I'm genuinely surprised that you didn't know that Wikidata contained more items than exist as standalone Wikipedia articles. I mean - the stats page says there's 15million wikidata items, which is certainly more than all the Wikipedias combined (especially when you account for the fact that most articles are duplicated across multiple languages). The first import of Wikidata items - to get this database going was indeed the list of Wikipedia articles (I think they started with articles that existed across 2 or more wikipedias and have existed for more than 5 days [to avoid the speedy deletion candidates]). But, since then, there's been a lot of external databases that have been used to create items in Wikidata that didn't exist in Wikipedia. For example here's a whole bunch of databases that have been imported to the "Mix n Match" tool - https://tools.wmflabs.org/mix-n-match/? - that are available for people to check against existing Wikidata items to see if they exist. For example - ADB is the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Once all the items that already ARE in Wikidata are confirmed, then it's possible to automatically create Wikidata items for the remaining items en-mass.

The list that I'm currently working on[1] was created by user:Multichill after he imported the database of paintings that are in the National Gallery of Victoria and created Wikidata items for each of those paintings. For the majority of those paintings, there was already a Wikidata item for the painter - but for many there wasn't. This list is an automatically created search of several databases relating to Australian artists to see if those 'missing' artists exist in more than one external database (with the same birthdate etc). If so, then I can hit the 'create' button and build the wikidata item for the person quickly. Multichill's bot will come along later and notice that that the painter now 'exists' and link up the paintings to the painter! Voila. If you'd like a list of tasks to do yourself - I'm sure Multichill can create one to suit your interests :-) Wittylama (talk) 10:52, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Yeah well we all come to data along different routes... I was very ill during the wikidata sessions at London wikimania, maybe I missed something at that stage. I have been indeed simply going in trying at a hand (as opposed to bot level) modification of descriptions on things that I know. I find the hand/correcting or improving descriptions and akas, and slow plodding through properties not yet filled a mor einteresting way to go at this stage. Ageing brain and all, thanks for your time of taken to explain your side of it - sounds amazing!! JarrahTree (talk) 00:07, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Also I assume you are aware of Australia having a wikidata grand tour by pigs on the wing in february next year? The more the GLAM institutions with databases that can be shared are in the know, the better. Thanks again, and If I dont catch you elsewhere, have a safe christmas. JarrahTree (talk) 08:13, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

No, I wasn't aware that user:pigsonthewing was coming downunder! As you may know, I now live in Italy so I won't be able to meet up when Andy's in the region. But I'm very happy to help provide any connections/contacts if I can be of help. Wittylama (talk) 12:35, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

It's not yet confirmed. Watch this space. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:45, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

It's my talkapge, of course I'm watch[listing] it! :-P Wittylama (talk) 20:48, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

That's good, might not be confirmed officially yet, but indeed anticipated, and hoped for - as Oz needs friendly, informative, helpful data explainers in and talking, what with some of the potential issues alerted in recent signpost in wp en. JarrahTree (talk) 23:14, 10 December 2015 (UTC)