Wikidata:WikidataCon 2017/Notes/Wikidata x Politics Meetup

Title: Wikidata x Politics Meetup

Organisers edit

Abstract edit

Lots of us have been working on data for politicians in our individual countries, but what can we learn for the experience of others doing so in other countries? Do they have tools or approaches which could be borrowed for other contexts? What are the challenges that none of us have found ways around?

This is a super-informal meetup which will shape itself around the interests of taking part.

If small - could be fire-side chat style, if more people are interested, we'll do something a bit more structured.

Agenda edit

  • Discuss different data modeling

Attendees edit

  • Martin, UK
  • Luca, Sanita, IT. Works with ministries/ministers
  • Bene, Wikidata dev
  • Marco, NYC. From the SemWeb world. Worked on BundesTag elections 2017.
  • Martins, LV.
  • Pymouss, FR.
  • Thore, DE, con terra GmbH.
  • Björn, DE, Government of North Rhine-Westphalia
  • Peter, AT.
  • Envel, FR.
  • Andrew, worked on UK data
  • Tony, has worked on data for almost every country

Discussion edit

Why are we doing this?

Lucy uses to work for OKF. People shouldn't make the work many times in differents places.

Tony: politicians should be held accountable. And for that we need data

What about funding? Interestingly, Facebook does interesting things with elections − they reuse the Wikidata data.

Our goal is to make political informations available for every citizen.

Stefan: “Hilarious” election cycle recently in Austria. And everywhere: Trump, Russia involvement etc.

Lucy: In 2016 in the UK was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire ; lots of politicians then said “I raised red flags for a long time etc.” − but data, and records proved that it was BS.

Tony: I want transfers between countries made easy. Querying stuff like « does same-sex marriage get voted in with lower MP avergage age » should be made for any country.

However: There is no equivalence between political positions − a US senator is not really analogous

Where the data are coming from?

Luca: Most of the time, from offcial website of Italian Chamber of Deputies.

What about the granularity of the data ?In the UK

Andrew and Stefan : Wikidata should be the spine for more projects − providing identifiers for people, for other tools to use.

Tony: For people, but also parties, consistuencies, municipalities, political groups.

Andrew: Wikidata can also bridge across countries/systems − a British MP might have been in the Scottish parliament, and the EU Parliament

Where do you draw the line between data that belongs to Wikidata? What about election results? What about positions on a given issue?

Lucy − to give an OpenStreetMap analogy: we are still mapping the roads − we’ll see later about individual trees :)

Data modeling: differences between countries: Sure, systems are different ; but concepts like consistuencies, elections, parties are consistent

Is there a standard for data modeling ?

Not really, for now.

Competing 'systems'

OTOH, we don’t want to start by making ontologies.

All for emergent ontologies, but there should be some concertation.

We should put some examples on a page to help editors to create/develop/update items.

Andrew: We tried to define 3 schemes − simple, moderate, complex − all compatible.