Wikidata talk:Lounge

Latest comment: 1 year ago by LAP959 in topic In need of some comfort

Revert patterns edit

I'm interested in knowing more about edit revert patterns. Do they happen often? Do people talk to each other? What are the most conflicting topics? And more importantly, what should be the proper way to act? Talk first, revert later?--Micru (talk) 13:16, 25 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

Depending on how an edit was caused, reverting can be useless. When statements are added with one of the Autolists, based on set theory assumptions are made about its properties.. These are categories that have an "is a list of" "human" statement with qualifiers that express what the category should be about. Every now and again, the categories structure is flawed. this is when you can get into problems.
Typically edits are done with qualifiers in Autolist.. eg only when it is a human.. and only when the value has not been set already. This takes care of most issues.
Reverting can be useless because the process does happen repeatedly. So when something is NOT a human, reverting does not help while adding a statement with the right instance does.
Obviously, when something goes wrong it is possible to remove statements. This does not work all the time. To remedy this I have asked Amir to write a bot that can be more precise in removing statements. Talking/chatting does make a difference; it is quick, not so controversial and it establishes a relation between people. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 13:46, 25 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
One point I noticed is that the reason for reverting is often omitted. --Succu (talk) 20:49, 25 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
Yes, in general reverting without pointing out the cause might be considered offensive (unless the reverted change is clearly a mistake). It is already possible to enter a reason, perhaps it is not visible enough?--Micru (talk) 21:38, 25 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
How do I even provide a reason? I have the habit of usually providing reasons over there on Wikipedia but I am new here and almost everything in this wiki looks completely foreign to me.—Al12si (talk) 02:43, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Al12si: When you go to the history and click "undo", then there is a text field where you can add the reason. It has some pre-written automatic text, but you can add more. It is not that obvious, and I agree that some tutorial is needed. Would it help to write a "reverting nicely done" article?--Micru (talk) 09:27, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Micru: Ah, that’s probably why I’ve never seen anything. I’ve (fortunately) never had the need to use the Undo link yet. But I’m more surprised that normal edits (in both the normal editor and the translation editor) are just edit, save, and you’re done with no mechanism to log a commit message of any sort.—Al12si (talk) 10:21, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Al12si: I found this: Bugzilla45224. Actually the software supports summaries, it is just a matter of the UI. And I can imagine that it is hard to integrate such a feature in the UI without making it harder to understand or bloatting it. Tough to solve...--Micru (talk) 11:37, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

Ideas for work... or for fun! edit

Do you think we should organize something off-wiki? Wikimania is getting near, so maybe it would be a great time to meet up. Or we could organize a postcard exchange or a contest to find hidden vandalism :) Any more ideas?--Micru (talk) 19:54, 25 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetups ? EdSaperia (talk) 12:13, 26 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
Great! Bene* started it already: Wikidata Meetup.--Micru (talk) 06:58, 31 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
Yes, please add what you think should be discussed or worked on. :-) -- Bene* talk 08:21, 31 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

References, references, references... edit

What can we do to encourage our users to provide them? --Succu (talk) 20:55, 25 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

Succu, maybe thank them when they provide them? I mean, sometimes we don't show enough appreciation for what others do, and without showing appreciation, why should others do it? To follow a rule? Bah... That should be avoided, because we are here to have some good time, not to punish each other for doing or not doing something. What do you think about giving out badges to the ones that bring the best references?--Micru (talk) 21:15, 25 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
What is this "best "? A pure url or an elaborate reference item? --Succu (talk) 21:24, 25 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
The one that when you click on it makes you think "this is awesome!" Sometimes we spend too much time telling what someone did wrong, but not what someone did right or what we appreciate. And if one only gets only negative feedback, that is very discouraging...--Micru (talk) 21:35, 25 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
Maybe we have a different opinion what awesome means (in the news), I prefer exact references. --Succu (talk) 21:43, 25 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
Unfortunatelly exactness has limits... because the world is inexact and ever-changing. And if you put too much pressure on yourself or on others, you will become frustrated. And with frustration one stops or causes others to stop contributing, and when one stops contributing there is no more point in talking about exactness... It is better to focus on good practices and, above all, to promote a healthy collaboration and positive engagement.--Micru (talk) 22:35, 25 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
What I was refering to is, that Help:Sources#Web page did not recommend the use of P357 (P357). Without this it's difficult to retrieve the page if it was moved to another url. --Succu (talk) 18:57, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
Micru? ..Succu (talk) 21:39, 2 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Succu: Having the quote or archive URL (P1065) should be enough, but TBH I don't remember what were the specific arguments to omit the title. Perhaps the lack of an adequate property?--Micru (talk) 07:49, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Verification is something that does need a policy too. This is especially important for living person's items, as it is the foundation policy to require that all such information be very well-sourced.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:15, 26 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

@Jasper Deng: This is page to discuss more the human side of the issue. Here come people from all walks of life, with different expectations, with different levels of expertise, and with different standards. When a beginer comes and enters a statement, it would be very discouraging to tell him or her, "btw, we have this sourcing policy that either you abide to or gtfo". It is better to be a bit more relaxed and just show by example, like "welcome! I have added such and such sources so we can veryfy your statement, if you want to learn more about it check Help:Sources". When the person has gained more experience then we can ask more from them, and guide them properly, neither with orders nor with a policy-hammer, just informing how is the best way to reach some basic expectations so their statements can survive and be considered useful.--Micru (talk) 10:06, 26 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
How we present policies is distinct from whether we have them or not. Nothing more, nothing less. But this particular policy just happens to be non-negotiable, since biographies of living persons are a serious manner. I've had to revisiondelete multiple violations of this principle here, and this was the principle grounds for us first electing oversighters.--Jasper Deng (talk) 16:17, 26 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
Another it is what are you morally obliged to do and how you shape it. If you shape it as something rigid as a policy, you might comply with the rule, but you might forget or even override the moral principle. The fact that it is already being done, show that it is already working without the need of formalizing it. Perfect!--Micru (talk) 09:23, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

The biggest hindrance to easily adding references, in my opinion, is the use of unnecessary reverse properties. Say I found a source that states A is the father of B; I have to put the reference in both A and B items, which is time-consuming and unnecessary. —Wylve (talk) 04:05, 26 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

@Wylve: It looks like something that could be automated. Have you asked the bot operators about it?--Micru (talk) 10:06, 26 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

I have tried to add references and it doesn't seem to work the way I expect. Many items that I created were created from clicking on the Wikidata link from the article. Why can't my first edits just have Wikipedia as a reference? Jane023 (talk) 18:46, 26 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

I know they exist but I have zero idea how they work. I know I’m supposed to read the help files but editing Wikipedia/Wikidata is something I should not be doing right now. How things work seem to be generally a bit opaque here, I think.—Al12si (talk) 02:40, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Jane023: Wikipedia cannot be considered a valid source because it is a tertiary source. What is missing is a way to share common sources used in Wikipedia with Wikidata. A technical challenge that will eventually happen, but for now just patience and endurance.
@Al12si: It should be as easy as with the visual editor, but again technical developments not depend on us. For now you can read Help:Sources and Wikidata:UI redesign input. If you have any idea to make it more clear or smooth, you can post it there.--Micru (talk) 09:23, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
Micru thanks, so far Wikidata has not let me down. I keep discovering new ways to use it, so I will just wait and see. Meanwhile, since I have been adding several painting items, I wonder if there is a way to bundle edits to create a Wikidata item with the same property claims (depicts, collection, inventory number, date of foundation, creator, catalog). Now each property is a separate edit, which seems a bit excessive to me. Jane023 (talk) 09:42, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Jane023: I never used it, but I think QuickStatements can do that. Even more important is that we users don't let each other down :) --Micru (talk) 11:48, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Micru: Maybe that’s part of my problem. On Wikipedia I can’t stand the visual editor and I disabled it on sight. Somewhere where I can’t disable it (French I think) I was horrified until I noticed the “Edit Source” button…—Al12si (talk) 10:10, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Al12si: Oh, well, I was thinking more of importing automatically metadata from external sites, and then share that information with wikipedia. IIRC the cite-bot was doing that without using VE, but given that metadata is much more easily handled as a set of text fields, I don't know what could be easier than using a pop-up window with fields to enter or import that kind of data...--Micru (talk) 11:48, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

First essay edit

Here it is: Speaking rightly, acting rightly. Is there anything else that should be mentioned or something that doesn't fit well? I was thinking if it is worth it to follow a wiki structure, but the text is not that long, so that might make it more difficult to read.--Micru (talk) 10:54, 27 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

And now some Jokes!. They are bad, I know :D Add your own!--Micru (talk) 12:11, 29 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

What's better: More or more exact statements? edit

Some users think we should hurry to add statements about an item topic even if they are not quite exact. I'm not happy with this. --Succu (talk) 20:55, 1 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Ok, you have a position but the one thing that is interesting is understanding WHY you hold this opinion and how you think it moves us all forward. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 22:42, 1 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
GerardM: We have no deadline pressure. So there is no need to rush and we should give us time to critical reflect our contributions. This refection moves us all forward, I think. --Succu (talk) 18:20, 2 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Sorry that is no argument. It is also blatantly false. If we want to be relevant, we need a vision and priorities. We have some relevance thanks to the application of our data. In my opinion, we desperately need to identify what an item is a subclass or instance of. Based on this information many subsequent statements will fall into place. In Reasonator for instance we can OBSERVE how this is true. Sadly Wikidata on its own does not provide such insights. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 19:14, 2 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
no argument and blatantly false are strong words, but relax. I have a clear vison about my limited field of contributions, taxa as you know and to be more accurate: plants. This includes a plan and what should be done first of all. When I detect an error my bot made, I try to find out what was going wrong and reflect about this issue. About what my current approach omitted and how could my bots work could be done more robust. I'm doing this because I'm responsible. BTW: I doubt e.g. an exact birthday „fall into place” because rdf:type or rdf:subclassof are present. --Succu (talk) 20:09, 2 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
As you know, I agree that the current three part approach to taxonomy makes sense for now, it does not allow us to do justice to the taxonomy of plants.. I blogged about it in the past.. Cactus opuntia anyone ?
Probably same species as Opuntia ficus-indica (Q144412). Linnés specimens (aka types) are not always clear. --Succu (talk) 21:02, 2 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
<grin> from a taxonomy point of view your answer is wrong. Taxonomy is about descriptions and your answer is not about taxonomy at all. </grin> GerardM (talk) 07:32, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Really? Is it? --Succu (talk) 08:33, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Taxonomy is not only about identifying according to some insight. It is also about how those insights came into being. Cactus opuntia is a Wikidata item and linking it to more modern insights is plain wrong from a taxonomy pov. GerardM (talk) 09:19, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
I've added Cactus opuntia (Q13409575) to Opuntia ficus-indica (Q144412) via taxon synonym (P1420). Of cause with a reference. --Succu (talk) 09:57, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Back to the discussion, there is still no argument why we should not have priorities and work towards making our data useful and relevant. Your example of a more exact birthday is a no-brainer.. Lets have it when we can. But lets have what we can. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 20:35, 2 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
I presented a rational, regarding me and my bot - I think, including my priorities. So what are yours GerardM? --Succu (talk) 21:02, 2 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
If you do not know what I aim to achieve and how you live under a rock. There is for instance my blog where I often write about priorities and approaches for Wikidata.
The biggest priority for Wikidata is to at least identify items for the instance / subclass they belong to. The second one is to bring applications to the data we hold. GerardM (talk) 07:32, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Dear GerardM: No I'm not living on the dark side of the moon. But I'm not interested in what bloggers are telling the world. But lets end us these private pinpricks. My original question is unanswered. --Succu (talk) 20:02, 4 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Succu: Your original question remains unanswered because it has no answer. Neither "more" nor "more exact" are "better" because they are not mutually exclusive and items are not static elements. They are created, and grow with statements, sources, etc. I think it is better to pose your question in other terms: "how should statement quantity and their exactness evolve over time?" I would say that the more organically the better, but that is just my personal approach.--Micru (talk) 13:04, 13 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
So all we need is a little bit more of fuzzy logic (Q224821) to get the „truth“ out of incorrect statements? Why should we evolve a statement if it could be exact immediately? --Succu (talk) 21:23, 13 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Recently we got a batch of value additions to NCBI taxonomy ID (P685), ITIS TSN (P815), Encyclopedia of Life ID (P830), IPNI plant ID (P961) and Plant List ID (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) (P1070) from ruwiki. So we have a lot of more statements now. Have we? On August, 3rd 333841 objects had the property ITIS TSN (P815). There were 17 single value and 12 unique value constraint violations. On August, 13th 276 more objects (=334117) were tagged with ITIS TSN (P815). The constraint violations increased to 462 (single value) and 404 (unique value). In the case of Plant List ID (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) (P1070) we got a lot of invalid ids, because there is a new version of The Plant List (Q625817). The import ignored the correct and referenced statements. --Succu (talk) 09:53, 14 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
I believe this has to do with Wikipedia’s current policies of notability and no research, policies which Wikidata has inherited from and which I have never agreed with. If I’m not mistaken, before I decided to quit I was on Wikipedia before these policies came into being and I had originally been presented with a vision that’s totally different from what the current “vision” is.—Al12si (talk) 19:53, 2 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Succu: Just Yesterday I followed some report link on project chat, this lead me to put a statement about the nature of a random item. It was a geological depression in spain, and before there was almost no statements about that item. I did not add a reference. Is this bad ? I don't think so : it connected the item to other items (depression (Q190429)      ). TomT0m (talk) 07:43, 2 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
TomT0m: Thats completly fine with me, because it's an unhurried way to improve wikidata. --Succu (talk) 15:45, 2 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

What is our goal and why? edit

Our mission is quite vague, "to collect all human knowledge", and that makes difficult to assess notability or sourcing requirements, because isn't my chocolate cake recipe also knowledge that I can source? In my opinion it would make more sense to define it as "to collect all knowledge that helps users understand the nature of the shared reality". Why? Because the more accurate knowledge we have, the happier that knowledge can make us.

Under that light, sourcing is not the goal, but a tool that connects the presented reality to the realities as others have experienced (sources). When a statement is not sourced, it doesn't mean that it is wrong, just that it cannot be proved that many people accept it as valid.

Notability is going to be always a blurry line, although there is knowledge that can help more users understand their position in their reality. For instance, to know what is a "lung" can be directly enlightning to many users, while to know "Breaking Bad's creator" brings less direct perspective, but since it is culturaly near to many, it can be used as a "entry vector" to the set of relationships that make "creative works" emerge and how that human characteristic integrates in the whole. My chocolate cake doesn't bring direct knowledge, nor it can help anyone as entry vector because just a couple of people now about it. Shame! :)

What are your views?--Micru (talk) 09:54, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

My views haven’t really changed substantially since notability and sourcing became important on Wikipedia: That the requirements of notability and sourcing are fundamentally incompatible with the goal of “to collect all human knwoledge”, because there is such a thing as oral traditions that have never been written down. There is always the marginalized cultures and subcultures, orally transmitted knowledge, etc. that have scant literature and therefore most people will deem them non-notable (or unreliable, etc.), even though if you have even a weak connection to that culture or subculture you can see how claims or non-notability, “need reference” claims etc. fall apart.
This gets sort of philosophical. If you are a marginalized subculture (and this includes things such as skilled trades transmitted by apprenticeship, or even specialized professions) you’re going to be deemed NN. And if someone studies you and creates a body of literature, that uninformed opinion is now suddenly “reliable” and makes you “notable”. How on earth can you claim the people inside that subculture have less knowledge (or less reliable knowledge, or a COI, etc.) than the people who studied them? I used to have a high regard for research until I had to read papers myself and I was surprised how much crap is out there. And on Wikipedia if we found an academic source it’s like we struck gold when it’s probably as likely to be crap. (I suppose my subculture is just marginalized enough that unsourced statements almost feel more reliable to me than sourced statements.)
I don’t see any solution to this. But then I’m sort of a pessimist.—Al12si (talk) 11:00, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
A project has to have some sort of principles on what can be included. That said, en.wn has a fundamentally different notion than en.wp; they have notability, we have newsworthiness. (We also have a profoundly different notion of neutrality, so that by each project's standards the other may publish non-neutral material... but I digress.) Wikinews also encourages stuff like interviews capturing oral traditions, though original reporting takes know-how and significant documentation to achieve our verifiability standards.
I'm actually working on an essay, presumably to put up on meta once I'm done, about the failure of Wikipedia to encourage readers, or even contributors, to ground understanding and opinion in objective fact. Wikipedia has chosen a task (writing an encyclopedia) that seems to require non-objective judgements, but that's not the same thing as adopting a non-fact-based mindset, and it's reasonable to suppose that if you encourage readers to adopt a non-fact-based mindset (thus actively degrading their information-consumption judgement) you're undermining the Foundation's stated educational mission. --Pi zero (talk) 11:46, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
The problem with neutrality is that there is no such thing as objective fact. I don’t know why we’re hanging onto this when even people to write info panels for science museums know this (and use this to their advantage). All statements require a POV, what the museum people call a discursive frame, some others call a presuppositional framework, and what mathematicians call axioms. There is no such thing as facts that speak for themselves.—Al12si (talk) 11:54, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
The meme that there is no such thing as objective fact can start out (insidiously) as a well-intentioned philosophical stance, or a well-intentioned attempt to foster cooperation between parties with different perspectives, but ultimately it is a tool used by what, as far as I've seen, is probably the most descructive mindset on the planet, responsible for at the very least hundreds of thousands of deaths within the past decade and a half — and that's just directly by death in war. Fundamentally it's a confusion between the separate questions of whether or not there is objective reality, whether or not it's possible for an individual person to be perfectly objective in their perception of reality, and whether or not they should even be trying to be objective. I try to have pity, rather than contempt, for people who give up on trying to be as objective as they can and instead start with an agenda and invent "facts" to fit. "Perfection isn't possible, therefore I shouldn't even try" may sound silly when stated explicitly, but it makes a very seductive and deadly trap when it's allowed to creep up on you. I see three forms of the agenda-based mindset, of which the most destructive and subtle doesn't afaik even have a good name: it's easy to hate "lying", where the claimant knows what they're saying is false, and about as easy to hate "bullshit", where the claimant makes stuff up without caring whether it's false, but then there are people who... I'm not sure what goes on in their heads, but the effect is that they make stuff up, out of whole cloth, to fit their agenda, and somehow or other they think that's what you're supposed to do. There were conservative pundits in the US who used invalid statistical analysis to claim Mitt Romney was going to win the presidency by a landslide — and then were evidently actually surprised when it didn't happen. It's a misnomer to call that "believing their own lies", because as best one can figure they weren't deliberately saying things that were false, so it wasn't lying; and it's not, as I say, exactly "bullshit" if they think the way to arrive at truth is to make stuff up that fits one's agenda.
Shifting gears — The core differences between neutrality per Wikipedia versus Wikinews, as I understand them, are twofold. One difference is, Wikipedia seeks for "balance", which really means reflecting current biases of society (which can get pretty ugly when one isn't even trying to minimize such biases), whereas Wikinews seeks to avoid misleading bias — that is, if one is telling one side of a story, one shouldn't mislead the reader into thinking that's the only side. The other difference is, Wikipedia enthusiastically dives into subjective judgements, making (frankly) no real effort even to minimize them, whereas Wikinews, being a news project, has the luxury of reporting facts — we can cut out a ridiculously high percentage of the subjectivity by the simple technique of attributing claims. I mean, if politican X said politician Y is a coward, it would be unacceptable for us to assert, in our own voice, that Y is a coward, but if we report that X said Y is a coward, we're reporting objective fact. (Are we reporting correctly? Well, we can usually have pretty high confidence about what X said; if we get it wrong we can issue a correction, not that that happens often, but frankly correction policy is a separate question.) --Pi zero (talk) 12:49, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Al12si: I hate being unable to articulate things well (which inevitably happens; it's especially frustrating that, seemingly, the more important something is, the harder it's likely to be to articulate). If I were a lot more eloquent than I am, the points I'm trying to make ought to be very nearly self-evident once pointed out; it's helpful to me to see how I botch my explanations, and how they're misunderstood, here, so I can try to find better ways to say them for that essay I'm writing.
In this case, I wonder if it'd be better to focus on the distinction between objective "fact" and subjective "claim/opinion" (which is a continuous spectrum, not at all "black and white"). It seems to me an encyclopedia deals with only a modicum of objective information (so-and-so was born in 1825), rather a lot of consensus analysis of evidence (gravity is an attractive force between massive objects), and a fair amount of consensus opinion (the additional letter fell out of use because it was too difficult to pronounce). The most objective stuff has a pretty small subjective element, and that's the sort of stuff we try to stick to with news reportage; it seems like an encyclopedia would necessarily deal with more stuff that has a larger subjective element in it, but when readers, or contributors, stop trying to anchor things in objective fact as much as possible, that's a reason to worry. --Pi zero (talk) 14:57, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Pi_zero: Oh I don’t have a problem with not being eloquent. I am totally ineloquent. I totally lose out in any argument. That’s a fact (given my discursive frame, of course).
The problem with Wikipediaish objectiveness is that you have to “prove” it, and the mechanism to achieve the proof is that marginalized subcultures become even more marginalized. I have recent experience in which very well known associations in a certain specialized profession are tagged NN (over at en.wp), and a nationally-scoped (acutally provincially scoped, but they call their provincial legislature the national assembly, so it’s not really abusing the word national) association for another specialized profession tagged NN. I hate to say it but the concept of neutrality really guarantees that certain valid facts will never make it in Wikipediasphere. Sad but true, and I really don’t think anything is going to be fixed ever. It’s not possible.
wp.en’s referencing “requirements” are even stricter than those for writing university essays. And see how Wikipedia is looked down upon in academia. In a way Wikipedia itself is a marginalized subculture, but what is it doing to prevent knowledge about other marginalized subcultures from staying in Wikipedia. I think this is very ironic.—Al12si (talk) 18:33, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Anyway, the thing about objectivity not existing is not that objective reality doesn’t exist, but that when you make any statement about it you must have some framework to frame that reality. That’s your discursive frame / presuppositional framework / set of axioms. And these really can’t be proved (and in fact cannot be provable if they truly are aximomatic) or you have a meaningless system of logic. Social scientists know that bias is inevitable and what’s important is that you state your bias upfront. And of course before that happens you need to know you are biased and need to know what your bias is. But neutrality as such… there is no such thing.
(i.e., yes, I agree with your distinction between objective facts and subjective claims. The problem is that any claim is necessarily subjective, whether you know it or not, because claims must exist within an unprovable discursive frame.)—Al12si (talk) 18:42, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Al12si: There are various things there I could (in principle) comment on... and if I waited to try to comment on all of them at once I'd never get around to replying. So I'll comment on some things and not worry, for now, what I may be leavig out.
Social scientists work in a particular sort of context. I have doubts that even a typical social scientist would claim all statements are so subjective they all need declarations of bias attached. Experimental research though needs careful documentation of the experimental equipment so one can consider it critically, and in social science research the equipment tends to include the experimenter.
You brushed on something else, above, that's bothered me for years. There's a — the best term I can think of is "myth" — widespread amongst Wikipedians that academics look down on Wikipedia because they don't realize how high Wikipedia's quality is compared to, say, Britannica. As if improving Wikipedia's academic reputation were a matter of better informing academics. As long as Wikipedians are blind to the fundamental properties of Wikipedia that render it inherently not to be taken seriously as an academic source, nothing will change.
Wikipedia is an information parasite, providing no information that doesn't ground its trust-worthiness in being on some other site. As a parasite it can serve the immensely useful roles of gathering stuff together in one place where it can be found, and sometimes also explaining it clearly, both without imposing a paywall. Neither of these things contributes to suitability as an academic source; indeed its parasitic nature means there's always a better source available; basically, either a Wikipedia article provides a link to something that should be used instead, or the information can't be trusted because it's unsourced on Wikipedia. And Wikipedia is also pervaded by a profound lack of interest in striving for truth. Academia is all about striving for truth, which does not in any way-shape-or-form require any lack of understanding of the nature of subjectivity or whatever. But given a choice a choice between somebody who does an experiment to see what happens, and somebody who objects that perception is subjective, I'd rather the one doing the experiment. --Pi zero (talk) 19:38, 5 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia is an information parasite. An interesting perspective, but how fits Wikidata into this scheme? --Succu (talk) 19:46, 5 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

@Succu: Well, of course I got into it here in the first place as a matter of broad perspective; it's valuable for any wikimedian sister, when trying to get a grip on its own position in the scheme of things, to understand better where Wikipedia sits because Wikipedia can't help being a major feature of the wikimedian landscape. But that's a generic answer. Fwiw, I've gotten the impression (though I'd be happy to be convinced otherwise) Wikidata promotes the imposition of an encyclopedic ontology (very modern sense of ontology) on the non-encyclopedic sisters. I think if wikimedia is to have a long-term future, that future must be dominated increasingly by the non-Wikipedian sisters, because they are the growth sector, and have a variety of fundamental advantages that accrue from their more focused nature — though this would require software tool development that doesn't intrinsically push Wikipedia at the expense of its sisters. (I see the single biggest threat to the wikimedian movement atm being the Foundation making pious noises about innovation and then using the same tired excuses to justify a Wikipedia-only focus; but I digress.) So when I find myself suspecting that Wikidata is apt (all unintentionally, I think) to damage non-Wikipedian sisters by warping their ontologies toward an encyclopedic approach that isn't best suited to their purpose, that does make me worry for the long-term future of wikimedia.
Speaking of subjectivity/neutrality. --Pi zero (talk) 14:30, 10 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Pi zero, Succu:The Wikipedias have never been true to their stated goal of "summarizing all human knowledge", what they are doing is "to summarize what its users agree that it has to be summarized in natural language" and in the process they have confused the tool with the goal. The Wikipedias are a mean for users to get to their goal which is to get free information on any topic in their language for their desired (usually generic) granularity. If there are better tools to accomplish that, they should be used, no need to be so attached to one tool as the wmf, and some users, seem to be with the (English) Wikipedia.
But still I wouldn't qualify Wikipedia as an information parasite, but rather as an "information router". A router needs to interact with the person asking to direct him or her towards their goal somehow and since there is no real interaction with the information stored in the sources, some information accumulation is needed, hence Wikipedia. Google does the same, just not as well (yet). I have the impression that we are racing against them and that it will become more apparent as the years pass by.
Wikidata has been born with less complexes, because from the beginning it was very clear that it would act as an information hub. The biggest barriers I see are the self-imposed ones. For the first five years I consider it is ok to bring ontological enlightenment to as many projects as possible and work on the basic features, in the same way as Wikipedias brought collaboration enlightenment before to many other areas, but once that is done, why to stop there?
The other day on the wikidata meetup Vlsergey made the interesting remark that Wikidata should not focus so much on branding itself as an independent project, but on providing the platform for users to interact with customizations that meet their needs. This can be achieved in many ways, like building thematic portals which are closer to the user interests, providing customized visualizations (like Histropedia, or Reasonator), improving the edition interface from external projects, or even representing our data as natural language like Magnus and others suggested, even if it has a long time of trial&error&learning iterations to get it right. As Lydia said, all this is not trivial and it would require resources that now are scarce.
And there are more automatic knowledge extraction tools coming, like ContentMine, that might make of Wikidata the cornerstone of modern science, but it would require that we rethink how we handle items, how we create knowledge structures, and how many inaccuracies we allow to automatic tools. GerardM could probably tell you, at the moment there is a very low tolerance to errors from automated tools, no matter how high their accuracy is.
But yes, I generally agree with you that the biggest battle is about defeating old paradigms so we can create new ones that bring our representation closer to reality. Because in the end there is only one reality happening, no matter how many interpretations you derive from it.--Micru (talk) 12:44, 12 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Micru: Re Wikipedia's goals, I'm not sure I'd agree that summarizing all human knowledge is really all there is to their goal. Actually, I think their objectives are fundamentally mixed, with different groups working at cross purposes and a consequent failure to form a coherent overall community to the extent possible at more specialized sisters. That mix does often, though by no means always, have to do with which information they should and shouldn't be summarizing. The view of Wikipedia as an information router is interesting. I don't think, again, that that's all it is, but that's certainly an important part, and that might figure prominently if one were considering directions in which the project could be profitably pushed. (How to push such a massive unweildy thing in any chosen direction is another problem.) I don't think the information-router view is incompatible with the information-parasite view.
I'm concerned, again, with subjectivity. Or rather, with neglect of objectivity. On the information-producer side, someone who makes a claim (for example, by means of an edit to a wiki) can be trying to ground their understanding in objective reality (fact-based) or not trying to (agenda-based). On the information-consumer side, someone can be constantly thinking about how the claims presented to them relate to objective reality, or they can decide which claims to accept based on what they want to believe. Someone who's trying to be fact-based is better off than someone who isn't. A society of people who are trying to be fact-based is healthier than a society of people who are't trying. And a project that encourages people to think critically about what they're told is a positive influence on society, while a project that encourages people to not think critically about what they're told is — in that respect — a negative influence on society. Wikipedia seems to me to subtly discourage critical information-consumption, and in that respect works counter to the Foundation's educational mission. The simplest way it does this is by asserting subjective stuff that the reader is then encouraged to swallow whole. (Various objections could be raised to that; I can and have thought of several which I consider both obvious and ultimately ineffective.) Contrast Wikinews, where the very act of reading an article is likely to encourage critical information-consumption; we wouldn't (when our system succeeds as well as we aspire) say "the victim was wearing a blue sweater", but "police said the victim was wearing a blue sweater", or the like — very in-your-face about where the most potentially suspect information came from. Teaching good habits by example.
It seems to me Wikidata should be directly concerned with this question of how the presentation of information affects reader's critical information-consumption. The information here is primarily, from what I understand, an ontology (in the modern sense). Now, Wikinews deals in information with a comparatively low subjective component. Wikipedia deals with information with a surprisingly high subjective component — summarizing is, indeed, something we're leery of at Wikinews for just this reason, that the act of summary is heavily subjective. Wikidata, in building an ontology, it seems to me is also doing something with a large subjective component, as reflected for example in the fact that Wikinews's category hierarchy is sometimes quite different from Wikipedia's. So, what simple measures (they likely need to be simple if they're to be implemented and be effective) can Wikidata take that would help those using its output to think critically about its output? --Pi zero (talk) 17:14, 12 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Pi zero: For now readers cannot get much out of Wikidata, other than better infoboxes, clean sources, and an interconnected backbone. In the future I can imagine that since sources will be stored here, it will be possible to run analysis to see which capital is behind which information and provide insights about potential interests or biases of their owners. That is simple and I consider it has potential, but even after having the technical platform it would require effort to uncover all the relations.
OTOH, I must say the nature of Wikidata already pushes towards critical thinking. The structure is so constrained, that to represent any statement one has to think if it reflects reality well. It is a part of wikidata that it is just starting to grow, but that we don't have enough critical mass to push. At the moment Wikidata is being used more as a warehouse than as a loom with which to weave automatic descriptions (cf. w:intensional definition), system modelling, history representation, and other data patterns, which are much more interesting and rewarding. Perhaps we should be bolder and start a wikiproject to create all the ground properties and examples needed. Pinging TomT0m to see if he is up to the task :)--Micru (talk) 12:57, 13 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
The goal is making "a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge"; if the piles of cruft get too impenetrable, the knowledge is unusable, and the sharing slows and stops. Hence all the stuff about "well written, balanced, neutral, and encyclopedic, containing... notable, verifiable knowledge". We need to reject (or at least flag and sideline) trivia and misinformation, because otherwise we'd be wading through aggravating piles of cruft.
Eventually, everything will be brilliantly organised into all the logical structures in which humans might reasonably place knowledge, and everything will be so easy to find and assess for reliability that that no amount of cruft will be a problem (and I will tell my kitchen to find me a chocolate cake recipe for the ingredients it has, and maybe Micru's recipe will be exactly what I need).
This will probably involve putting referrals and reviews into databases, which is sort of what search engines (and ants) already do. I agree with Al12si that building these trust networks badly is a serious problem and could exacerbate inequality. On the other hand, Wikimedia is pretty open and egalitarian, compared to a government censor or an data broker. I do see fighting inequalities as part of our goal, and I wish the Wikimedia Foundation would revive attempts to democratize itself.
For now: obviously, spotting notability is subjective, and sometimes, we rely on cultural links to tell us if a new thing is important. Spotting objectively false information can sometimes be done by replicating experiments, but that's slow. So we also partly rely on cultural webs of trust for reasonable confidence that a thing is true.
Both these uses of sources are biassed, by our collective cultural ties. All marginalized cultures have poor cultural ties to mainstream culture. So it's hard to figure out if statements about them are notable or even, sometimes, true. This can be fixed! But giving (willing) marginalized cultures links to mainstream culture is the work of primary researchers, including anthropologists and journalists, not tertiary researchers, which is what we are here. HLHJ (talk) 17:14, 1 February 2015 (UTC)Reply
@HLHJ: SfEP has now been deleted, even though they are the UK’s national editor’s association and is very well known outside the UK (so they’re obviously notable, just not to people outside the profession—iow to people who are not qualified to say they’re NN but have the power to). This is my nightmare come true, I find this extremely insulting, and this shows anything—however notable—can be deleted on a whim because a group of people who have no clue about the subject say something is NN—and this is a direct result of Wikipedia’s ill-informed NN policy.
I’ve only signed on just now because I signed up for an event next week that will require a Wikipedia login. I really don’t want to come back here; everything here is heartbreaking unless you’re “just a user”.—Al12si (talk) 23:07, 12 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
I would say that "any claim is necessarily subjective, whether you know it or not, because claims must exist within an unprovable discursive frame" applies best to deductive logic. You can assume Euclid's axioms and deduce much more complex statements about plane geometry. Interestingly, you can change one axiom and get multiple Non-Euclidean geometries, which are actually very useful for practical tasks, like doing geometry on a spherical surface.
But these worlds are useful mathematical abstractions that humans designed. To learn about the messy world we run servers in, we need inductive logic, which gives us models and measures how well they predict the world we live in. It is thus possible for one model to be objectively better than another, even if you consider it a discursive frame. If one believes that the earth is flat, one will use the wrong geometric model, and calculations of practical things like "When will the tsunami hit?" will be wrong. Admittedly, waiting ignorance to kill is not the world's most sensitive method for detecting objective truth, so we have experiments and statistics. HLHJ (talk) 17:14, 1 February 2015 (UTC)Reply
@Pi zero:Information parasite == tertiary source? Academics traditionally love/write/fill libraries with encyclopedias and textbooks, which are substantially tertiary sources. You wouldn't cite them, for exactly the reasons you described, but they're fantastically useful as an entry into new subjects. I think many academics get annoyed with students who plagarize Wikipedia, and find Wikipedia aggravating by unfair association. HLHJ (talk) 17:14, 1 February 2015 (UTC)Reply
@HLHJ: Hm. I think there's more to it than merely being a tertiary source. For example, an en.wn synthesis article (as opposed to original reporting) may be a tertiary source, but there's a profound difference between an en.wn synthesis article and a Wikipedia article about the same story. If you read a (modern-era) published en.wn synthesis article, you know that what you're reading was vetted before publication. Yes, everything in it was taken from some other source (I'm supposing pure synthesis here), but the sources were assessed critically by the reporter and the reviewer to produce the article you're looking at. Much the same is generally true of those encyclopedias and textbooks filling libraries; the material was vetted by the author and perhaps others, whose earned reputation may be investigated at need, and once published after that vetting the material is stable, with any subsequent changes subject to further (and likely even more rigorous) vetting. Wikipedian material (well, en.wp material) isn't vetted before publication, vetting at publication is problematic (contributors have different agendas and, in any case, are encouraged to be bold), vetting after publication is only statistical and only applies with a sort of exponential decay after material has been there a while, the material is never really stable, and it's exceedingly difficult to trace anything back to anyone's earned reputation (except, again, on a purely statistical basis). I don't object to the en.wp workflow (it'd be just as absurd to apply the en.wn workflow to en.wp as vice versa), but these things do matter to the academic reception of Wikipedia, and they are also things a good information-consumer should be canny about but Wikipedia subtly fails to encourage its readers to be canny about. --Pi zero (talk) 18:13, 1 February 2015 (UTC)Reply
@Pi zero: I'd agree, with exceptions. More and more editors do care about earned reputation, and since a particular revision is stable, some feel responsible for their revision (if they do a fairly big re-write). For scientific subjects that attract little public attention, articles can be stable and remarkably good. HLHJ (talk) 20:28, 1 February 2015 (UTC)Reply
@HLHJ: I, in turn, would agree about those exceptions subject to some caveats. Such exceptions do occur, but it's an internal phenomenon and is internally discouraged in a couple of ways that immediately come to mind. Wikipedia has a policy against ownership of articles, and the Foundation is explicitly willing to sacrifice established editors for the sake of hypothetical recruitment of new ones. (I'm sympathetic to the non-ownership principle; I'm not sympathetic to the Foundation's tendency to trade things off aginst each other when with more insight into the system they're disrupting they could make them complement each other instead.) The reader is still subtly discouraged from thinking critically about where the information comes from, can't readily tell whether an article is (or used to be) one of these exceptions, doesn't have the practical means to investigate reputation for a given article. Having said all that, though, yes it does happen, and it's surely a better thing that it happens than if it didn't. It's even possible those exceptions could be a step on a path of Wikipedian evolution that would promote the best aspects of such exceptions while mitigating these problems. --Pi zero (talk) 18:25, 2 February 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Micru I would like most published cake recipes to be in Wikidata someday, and I anticipate that someday Wikidata will have them. At this point Wikidata is still so inaccessible that it is difficult for anyone to put large amounts of content here which could be so bad as to not be cleaned up later when processes are standardized. At this point I am not quick to turn anyone away. Recipes right now meet my standard for inclusion if they are backed by a published source. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:50, 2 February 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • @Bluerasberry: When sister projects complement each other, everyone benefits. When one sister poaches on another's territory, trying to turn it into a zero-sum game, both projects are damaged by it. Note also that highly specialized projects tend to have much more pleasant social atmospheres since the members of their communities have more of a common goal; witness Wikipedia, with one of the less precise goals of any of the sisters (with the possible exception of Wikiversity), subgroups commonly at cross-purposes, and a (frankly, well-earned) reputation for one fo the most toxic social atmospheres in the sisterhood. This is potentially a major flaw in the concept of Wikidata; it could be steered in a direction that would complement the other sisters, but it's liable to end up competing with them instead, to the detriment of all. Case in point: cake recipes belong on Cookbook. --Pi zero (talk) 17:59, 2 February 2015 (UTC)Reply
@Pi zero: How are we going to automate the translation of every recipe into every language if the ingredients and proportions are not stored in Wikidata? Already there is a problem in the cookbook with recipes being shown in imperial units, and with Wikidata, these amounts can also be converted for readers to match their culture's preference. Going beyond cookbooks, I want the Codex Alimentarius in Wikidata so that people can have descriptions of the "recipe" or specifications of every kind of processed food, and going beyond that, I want "recipes" for every mixture of chemical compounds in Wikidata including cross referencing to all papers published about proteins and defined in NCBI's database. Cookbooks are a great place to start when deciding how to catalog every published description of how to make anything. There is not enough human labor in Wikimedia projects to fill out that cookbook in every language without automated processing and translation. I am not convinced that Wikidata's power can be replaced by any number of Wikibooks in the case of recipes. People should be able to create a Wikibook by clicking some Wikidata entries then automatically having the recipes propagate into the book in their own language. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:44, 2 February 2015 (UTC)Reply
@Bluerasberry: I do not think things like what you appear to be describing — keeping a recipe in a single language-independent form and automatically generating a version of it in any language — is possible/desirable. Information content contained in language cannot be fully captured by an less sapience-oriented form than language, which is why translation can never be fully automated. Looking at it from another angle, it's a mistake to think of Wikidata as "more powerful" than the individual sisters. There is potential value in facilitating mutual support between different-language versions of content — be it a recipe, book, encyclopedia article, whatever — but fully automating it would necessarily lower the possible quality of the content, and be fundamentally contrary to the concept of wiki-ness. A mechanism that helps contributors to compare different-language versions and make sapient decisions based on those comparisons would be a good thing; a mechanism that devalues customization would be a bad thing. This sort of comparison becomes immensely complicated very fast with increasing complexity of the content; I think I can see how it could be usefully done for interwikis, a very simple sort of content that even so is seriously degraded by trying to do it entirely automatically from centralized structures at Wikidata. Recipes already have too much need/potential for flexibility for it to be at all easy to coordinate beneficial semi-automation (though the first step, clearly, would be to devise properly tools for wiki-markup-based semi-automation, which I'm working on). --Pi zero (talk) 14:27, 19 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
@Pi zero: This is a 2-3 year old discussion thread and I still stand by my defense of recipes. In October 2016 WMDE posted a recipe demo for cocktails, which are generally easier than food recipes, but it is still the same idea. That combined with the WMSE May 2015 Wikidata:Menu_Challenge make for instantly translatable cocktail recipes if they are in Wikidata in any language. I disagree that most recipes or that instructions in general are so subtle that they do not translate exactly - probably the majority do, especially with things like simple ratios of alcohol being mixed. I think it is fair to say that Wikidata is more powerful because from the entry of one recipe in one language any novice user can readily expect 100+ instant translations, which is a powerful tool to leverage for anyone with compatible content. It represents a great leap in opportunity. I would love to talk more about the direction of things and get community discussion going in any other direction you imagine if you have something to share about that semi-automation project you are working on. There is room for lots of things and among them I think many people should anticipate automated translation for formulaic processes which translate well without cultural nuance. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:42, 20 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
User:Bluerasberry i think it is great we can collaborate across the decades even with editors who have left the wiki. if english will not play recipe ball, then come over to wikisource, with your recipes, and then create item on wikidata. maybe a wikiproject. we have a Wikidata:WikiProject_Cheese and Wikidata:WikiProject Wine - how about Wikidata:WikiProject Recipe? Slowking4 (talk) 14:37, 28 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
Slowking4 At Wiki NYC we have some plans to meet with a culinary school which suggested a collaboration of this sort. Conversations are ongoing. This is not at the top of my priorities right now but I care about this and would join anyone else in leading this. Thanks for the heads up about those other projects - I did not know them. Interesting. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:30, 28 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
Bluerasberry that's great. some subject matter experts would get the best recipes. a text approach may be best as it gives a reference. for contemporary recipes, copyright may be an issue, but we could push a list of historic cook book recipes if there was a list. and CC license, if they want to share some of their secrets. and make each recipe a section page which could drive a wikidata item. let me know if i can help on the wikisource side. Slowking4 (talk) 18:43, 28 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
@Slowking4: Can you tell me more about what you might be willing to do? This particularly culinary school is large and well established. They have a library, and it happens that yes, they have a special collection of historic cookbooks and restaurant menus. Suppose you had some public domain menu or cook book. What might you do with it in Wikisource? What about a menu - those are shorter and perhaps easier to process. Do you have ideas for using a menu in multiple places in some clever way? Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:03, 28 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
Bluerasberry well, i can do the transcription. if they have books not on this list s:Portal:Cookbooks then they can get a book scanner and upload texts to internet archive. then we can grab it and transcribe it. and create wikidata items. we could pilot some recipes from the books there, and i see i have another to do list i should have done. if you have one page manuscripts or menus use flat bed scanner, and we can transcribe. i think the magic is when you query across menus or recipes. Slowking4 (talk) 19:48, 28 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

Newbie support at the Lounge? edit

Hello Loungers,

I'm in the process of updating Wikidata:Contribute and wondered if you think the Wikidata Lounge is a good place to list as somewhere that a new user might be able to go to find out the best way to contribute to the project (instead of just User:Lydia_Pintscher_(WMDE)'s talk page)? I realize the Lounge was not proposed as a similar initiative to the Wikipedia Teahouse and am therefore doubtful that the above scenario fits into what the Lounge is for, but thought I'd see what everyone else's thoughts are on the matter. In summary: do or would Wikidatans at the Lounge feel comfortable talking to newcomers about their interests and strengths and perhaps pointing them to a task or two to get started?

-Thepwnco (talk) 20:57, 7 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

@Thepwnco: As you say the audiences and the goals are different, so I don't know how it could be connected. If you have any ideas (perhaps subpages?) we could take a look about how to shape it. However I am not sure if we are ready to take that extra workload... we are not that many here.--Micru (talk) 14:43, 11 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Micru: I will discuss with Lydia and see what her thoughts are. I think it might be useful to introduce this type of support at some point, but I agree that it's not necessarily a good fit with the Lounge and, as you said, it may be more work than is possible just now. Thanks for your thoughts. -Thepwnco (talk) 17:50, 11 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Agree with Micru. Though I also agree that this might be a useful long-term goal. Zellfaze (talk) 13:12, 13 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Normative guidelines on reuse? edit

I understand why we have CC0 on Wikidata, but would it be a good idea to add a normative (non-legally-binding) statement about how we want people to use the data? For instance, not attributing is fine when it's impractical, but we'd appreciate it if it's easy, and we'd rather you didn't go out of your way to conceal your use of Wikidata; not sharing alike is fine if you can't do it without compromizing individual privacy, but if you are trying to avoid competition, we might publically criticize you. In theory, a selection of part of Wikidata, or an extension of part of it, could be legally copyrighted; should we say that we'd disapprove, and expect users to contribute their algorithms and extensions back to the community, unless there's a good reason not to? Some rough guidelines on what uses of data are in line with community norms might be helpful to have in advance. Any ideas on what would be good? HLHJ (talk) 17:38, 1 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

Lounge a Newbie-group? edit

It is a bit the same as the section above: #Newbie support at the Lounge?, but now with WD:Snuggle (see also en.wp) upcoming, maybe this would be the best place to host a place similarly to en:WP:Teahouse, as the Project chat might be a bit aggresive or too bold. Can you agree with me, or think of a better place or other suggestions? I hope to hear from you! Q.Zanden questions? 16:57, 3 June 2017 (UTC) @Micru, Zellfaze, Succu, AmaryllisGardener, Maximilianklein, Bene*: any ideas about it?Reply

Living people (draft) edit

hi, i was talking about this place over at Wikidata talk:Living people (draft), sorry about that. would people here be interested in expanding Lounge to include responding to Living People data. would people here be interested in requesting a grant for more training, and support to meet the mission of welcoming people, and responding to data quality questions? thanks. Slowking4 (talk) 13:48, 28 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

In need of some comfort edit

Hi, I read that this is a good place to go for help, relief and comfort. I love Wikidata and have been contributing for years. But in the past 30 days it's become very difficult. I'd like to get a little distance and perspective and learn how to de-escalate a situation. And, beyond that, how to engage in constructive dialog about properties which are still evolving. I've never felt so discouraged. Thank you. LAP959 (talk) 09:34, 31 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi LAP959 - just took a look at your talk page, I see there are several things going on that seem somewhat related. A little distance and perspective sounds like a good idea - are there other areas of wikidata besides "significant events" that you'd like to work on? Focusing on something else for a few months might be sensible, and then come back to this and see if there's a better way to model what you're trying to do that doesn't agitate others. ArthurPSmith (talk) 15:51, 1 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thank you. LAP959 (talk) 04:04, 2 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Return to the project page "Lounge".