Jennifer Love Hewitt Does NOT Do Porn. Apparently, Wikidata doesn't like this

[Midsize Jake]

Once again, our Wikipediocracy blog writer(s) have turned their focus to Wikidata, since our last blog about it apparently fell on deaf ears. But that blog piece had Melania Trump in the headline. This time, we figured we might have better luck by using a far more well-liked personality in the title, and indeed, in the whole piece.

Jennifer Love Hewitt Does NOT Do Porn
So why is Wikidata trying to make it look like she does?

https://wikipediocracy.com/2022/01/10/j ... t-do-porn/

As always, enjoy! And please note that some of the links this time are "not safe for work."

[Hemiauchenia]

I should note that despite the paleontologically themed pseudonym, I had no involvement in writing this. Good post. Wikidata is a rats nest of questionable data.

[Bezdomni]

Looks like Salvidrim! removed the links. Someone should tell him he has thousands more to go... perhaps he could recruit David Gerard.

Is Salvidrim still a member here? if so he has access to the sexualisation subforum where this was discussed (in case he wants to start some bot-wars). (§)

[Capeo]

Looking at these Wikidata entries, how do you even navigate to the references that supposedly support the assertion? Something like country of citizenship says two references imported from two different language wikis but I can't seem to drill down to the actual references.

[Zoloft]

Most excellent.

[Giraffe Stapler]

Looking at these Wikidata entries, how do you even navigate to the references that supposedly support the assertion? Something like country of citizenship says two references imported from two different language wikis but I can't seem to drill down to the actual references.

That's a whole different kettle of fish, but you're not missing anything. In a lot of cases, there is simply no reference. In many more, the reference is something as useless as saying "English Wikipedia" or "IMDB". These are probably the work of some bot. And sometimes there are actual links to where the information came from.

As far as I know (and I don't know much about Wikidata), there is nothing on Wikidata that requires editors to have references. If there is, it is not enforced. And I doubt anyone ever checks URLs to see if they work or are in any way related to the fact that was added.

[Smiley]

...on Wikidata, not only is such a link deemed “OK,” they specifically created a property just for that purpose.

But, to be fair, they did carefully consider all the implications before acting...

[Smiley]

Thierry Caro has his own Wikidata entry:

Q55468017 (History)

instance of: human
sex or gender: male
country of citizenship: France
residence: 11th arrondissement of Paris
birth name: Thierry Jean-Alain Caro
date of birth: 27 April 1982
relative: Patrice Pongérard
     kinship to subject: sister's husband
occupation: sociologist, local historian, Wikipedian
employer: Observatoire du développement de La Réunion
field of work: sociology of the body
official website: http://thierry-caro.com/
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thierry.caro
twitter: https://twitter.com/thierry_caro
     number of subscribers: 12
youtube: UCxcdgISUTcoKfN2iSBduYzQ
     number of subscribers: 2
wikimedia username: Thierry Caro
hair color: black hair
handedness: left-handedness

I feel it needs another property or two...

https://www.pornhub.com/video/search?search=thierry
https://xhamster.com/search/thierry

[Smiley]

The other dude, Trade, joined Danish Wikipedia in 2010:

Explains a lot.
It seems very little has changed.

[Smiley]

Indecent Proposals

May 2018: Wikidata:Property proposal/Pornhub ID

Proposed by: Thierry Caro

     Supported by: Pintoch, Robin van der Vliet

June 2018: Wikidata:Property proposal/YouPorn ID

Proposed by: Thierry Caro

     Supported by: Pintoch, Robin van der Vliet

July 2018: Wikidata:Property proposal/RedTube ID

Proposed by: Robin van der Vliet

     Supported by: Thierry Caro, ChristianSW

Dec 2020: Wikidata:Property proposal/EuroBabeIndex ID

Proposed by: 78.117.243.86

     Supported by: Trade, Caro

Oct 2020: Wikidata:Property proposal/xHamster ID

Proposed by: Thierry Caro

     Supported by: Crazy hat royal, Lockal, Trade, AntisocialRyan, Baidax, Pamputt

Nov 2021: Wikidata:Property proposal/babesdirectory

Proposed by: LuukH87

     Supported by: Alvin-80, Ontogon, Raks~nlwiki, UWashPrincipalCataloger

[Anroth]

What isnt touched on (and should be) is Wikidata's Living People policy. The talk page is interesting if you want some research.

(Appearance by Slowking4 who was booted off Pornhub & Xhamster for violating copyright.)

[Mason]

youtube: UCxcdgISUTcoKfN2iSBduYzQ
     number of subscribers: 2
hair color: black hair

At first I wondered what would happen if he got a third subscriber, but I see now that a bot comes along and updates that.

I was not able to determine which bot, if any, is tasked with updating his hair color should he go grey or bald. Seems a bit primitive to have to update that manually.

You have to admit, the man is thorough. Not as thorough as some folks:

facial hair: beard
hair color: red hair
start time: 1986
0 references

…but still pretty thorough.

[Moral Hazard]

Thierry Caro (T-C-L) has his own Wikidata (T-H-L) entry:
Q55468017 (History)

This did improve my knowledge of the overseas parts of France.

People working in the sociology of the body (T-H-L) have greater incidences of severe psychiatric pathologies than actors, composers, and mathematical logicians.

Luckily, most symptoms can be reduced by burning books mentioning Foucault and getting a job as a library janitor.

[FelinaLavandula]

Indecent Proposals

May 2018: Wikidata:Property proposal/Pornhub ID

Proposed by: Thierry Caro

     Supported by: Pintoch, Robin van der Vliet

June 2018: Wikidata:Property proposal/YouPorn ID

Proposed by: Thierry Caro

     Supported by: Pintoch, Robin van der Vliet

July 2018: Wikidata:Property proposal/RedTube ID

Proposed by: Robin van der Vliet

     Supported by: Thierry Caro, ChristianSW

Dec 2020: Wikidata:Property proposal/EuroBabeIndex ID

Proposed by: 78.117.243.86

     Supported by: Trade, Caro

Oct 2020: Wikidata:Property proposal/xHamster ID

Proposed by: Thierry Caro

     Supported by: Crazy hat royal, Lockal, Trade, AntisocialRyan, Baidax, Pamputt

Nov 2021: Wikidata:Property proposal/babesdirectory

Proposed by: LuukH87

     Supported by: Alvin-80, Ontogon, Raks~nlwiki, UWashPrincipalCataloger

[Capeo]

Looking at these Wikidata entries, how do you even navigate to the references that supposedly support the assertion? Something like country of citizenship says two references imported from two different language wikis but I can't seem to drill down to the actual references.

That's a whole different kettle of fish, but you're not missing anything. In a lot of cases, there is simply no reference. In many more, the reference is something as useless as saying "English Wikipedia" or "IMDB". These are probably the work of some bot. And sometimes there are actual links to where the information came from.

As far as I know (and I don't know much about Wikidata), there is nothing on Wikidata that requires editors to have references. If there is, it is not enforced. And I doubt anyone ever checks URLs to see if they work or are in any way related to the fact that was added.

Well, that all seems like a bad idea. I watched the video in the blog last night and it made it seem like there was more of solidified way to verify these parameters. I thought the flow of date started from the various wikis to then populate the parameters in WD. That's still somewhat questionable, but looking at it further it's just a free for all of basically unsourced info.

I hadn't really followed the WD stuff but now I see why there's been some pushback on enWP about, as I understood it, including these parameters to auto-fill infoboxes. That Living Persons policy TP Anroth linked to is illuminating/disturbing. Not least because it apparently took years, with minimal participation, to attempt to address some very basic privacy issues. Why is there even parameters for phone numbers and email addresses, for instance? There also seems to be slim protection for supposedly notable peoples' children having their parameters filled out.

I guess I was naive in thinking a WMF project would be more structured and well thought out. I'm failing to see the point of what this is supposed to accomplish really. It seems like it's just manually creating a database that will always pale in comparison to the data that financial and tech companies automatically create, but with less accountability and accuracy.

[Smiley]

it's just a free for all of basically unsourced info.

                                        link NSFW

[Anroth]

That Living Persons policy TP Anroth linked to is illuminating/disturbing. Not least because it apparently took years, with minimal participation, to attempt to address some very basic privacy issues.

'Minimal participation' is a bit unfair here actually. There has been participation, just not where you might think. The issue is that living persons policy I linked is the foundation level, not a policy like Wikipedia's BLP.

The reason why there has been little *progress* in BLP-levels of protection for living people is because of this:

RFC on verifiability and living persons (2016)
BLP Discussion on wikidata project chat (2017, as a direct result of actions taken by ENWP because of issues with descriptions taken from wikidata for mobile view.)

Hilariously Andy Mabbett blatantly lied about Wikidata having an equivelent policy once, despite (as can be seen from the discussions above) having directly contributed to the situation where it doesnt have one.

[Moral Hazard]

Wasn't Andy Mabbett simultaneously pushing English Wikipedia to adopt policies to make it easier for tech-companies to harvest data while being paid as a consultant to the same companies on how best to exploit Wikipedia?

Or is my memory wrong?

[Anroth]

Wasn't Andy Mabbett simultaneously pushing English Wikipedia to adopt policies to make it easier for tech-companies to harvest data while being paid as a consultant to the same companies on how best to exploit Wikipedia?

Or is my memory wrong?

Not wrong, just not proveable. He sold his 'services' commercially as a wikidata expert. So he has a financial COI in anything that gets more wikidata (which no one cares about re SEO) on ENWP (which everyone cares about re SEO).

[watis]

Good post, but some formatting issues.

[Midsize Jake]

Good post, but some formatting issues.

How does your screen get wider than mine? I've got a 4.5K monitor, dammit!

Anyway, I moved it down one paragraph, but I tried it on Firefox, MS Edge and Safari, so I guess I should get Chrome running somewhere too. (Not sure why I haven't actually, other than not trusting Google and all that sort of thing.)

Anyway, thanks...

[Moral Hazard]

Emboldening by KW

Good post, but some formatting issues.

How does your screen get wider than mine? I've got a 4.5K monitor, dammit!

The site Practical Typography (T-H-L) is run by Matthew Butterick (T-H-L), who designed the website for How to Design Computer Programs (T-H-L).

line length
45–90 characters or 2–3 alphabets

"Line length is the distance between the left and right edges of a text block.
Overly long lines are a common problem, but they’re easy to correct.
Shorter lines will make a big difference in the legibility and professionalism of your layout."

"Shorter lines are more comfortable to read than longer lines. As line length increases, your eye has to travel farther from the end of one line to the beginning of the next, making it harder to track your progress vertically.
Aim for an average line-length of 45–90 characters, including spaces.
You can check line length using word count."

Matthew Butterick (T-H-L)
Practical Typography
link

One of Butterick's fonts is used by Erik Spiekermann (T-H-L) for his book Stop Stealing Sheep (T-H-L).

Responsive web design
Responsive web design is a technique that allows web layouts to reflow to suit the scale and dimensions of the user’s screen (or viewport, in CSS parlance).

In this way, rather than trying to confect a one-size-fits-all layout, a web designer can specify changes for small screens (e.g. tall-format mobile phones) and large screens (e.g., wide-format desktop screens), and sizes in between. For instance, responsive design is used on many sites (including this one) to collapse a multi-column layout into a single column for mobile devices.

Be careful tying mobile layouts to CSS media queries based on pixel width. As mobile phones have gotten bigger, many sites are setting this threshold higher. (I’ve seen it as high as 1400 pixels.) The problem is that this causes the mobile layout to show up even in reasonably sized desktop browser windows.

Unfortunately, CSS media queries can’t distinguish desktop from mobile devices. If you really want to serve a mobile layout to large mobile devices, consider using JavaScript rather than media queries to detect mobile vs. desktop and load an appropriate stylesheet.

On this site, I use JavaScript to serve different weights of the body-text font to devices based on their typical rasterization characteristics. For instance, Windows users get a slightly heavier version than Mac users, to account for lighter screen rasterization.
link
Cf. Screen-Reading Considerations

One of Butterick's fonts is mandated for submissions to a Texas court.

Butterick is also a lawyer, and his book Typography for Lawyers (T-H-L) has a foreword by Bryan A. Garner (T-H-L).

[Midsize Jake]

I don't think this has much to do with fonts, since Tahoma is a standard pretty much everywhere (ever since Microsoft adopted it for Windows 95).

All I'm saying is that when I maximize a Firefox, Safari or Edge window on my 4.5K monitor (4480px × 2520px), the second sentence of the Just how did this happen? section, "Let’s look at just one of those properties," breaks before the word "just." On Mr. Watis's screenshot, the entire sentence makes it into the first line without breaking, which suggests to me that he's either using a browser that doesn't respect the blog theme's overall maximum-width setting, or my three browsers aren't going as wide as they should because of some display/scaling setting I'm unwittingly using.

I'd be more specific, but I'm not really a CSS guru and I'd probably get it wrong... I believe a few of our members are CSS gurus though, including Mr. Hazard (?), so maybe one of them will drop by to explain it better than I can, especially since there might be scaling involved.

[Moral Hazard]

I don't think this has much to do with fonts, since Tahoma (T-H-L) is a standard pretty much everywhere (ever since Microsoft adopted it for Windows 95).

All I'm saying is that when I maximize a Firefox, Safari or Edge window on my 4.5K monitor (4480px × 2520px), the second sentence of the Just how did this happen? section, "Let’s look at just one of those properties," breaks before the word "just." On Mr. Watis's screenshot, the entire sentence makes it into the first line without breaking, which suggests to me that he's either using a browser that doesn't respect the blog theme's overall maximum-width setting, or my three browsers aren't going as wide as they should because of some display/scaling setting I'm unwittingly using.

I'd be more specific, but I'm not really a CSS (T-H-L) guru and I'd probably get it wrong... I believe a few of our members are CSS gurus though, including Mr. Hazard (?), so maybe one of them will drop by to explain it better than I can, especially since there might be scaling involved.

I renew my interest in typography every time I need to get new eyeglasses, which is when I tend to make side remarks about Poppins.
Then, after I see well again, I feel bad about my past snideness and overcompensate by suggesting that Poppins may be useful for topics like this!

Tahoma (T-H-L) is fine but Verdana (T-H-L) Pro has better legibility (if one uses the appropriate stylistic alternative(s). Bother Tahoma and Verdana were designed by the Matthew Carter (T-H-L). Carter's legendary typeface Charter (typeface) (T-H-L) is available in .otf or .ttf formats from Butterick, for free (as in cost).

Here, for once, I was not complaining about fonts. I just wanted to indicate that Butterick is recognized as an expert in typography by Spiekermann and by Garner, who are legends in typeface--font design (e.g., Fira Sans (T-H-L)) and legal writing, respectively.

Butterick is an expert at website design and digital typography, and I believe his recommendations would prevent lines with 100 characters, which were shown in a screenshot. I have no idea whether implementing such recommendations is possible on our platform.

[Beeblebrox]

I tried, but i don't think it is going to go anywhere link. The replies mostly seem to agree there is a real problem, but I don't really get the technobabble. And of course there's one person arguing about the definition of pornography, which implies to me that they completely misunderstand what is going on here since "identifier for a porn performer in the database of the xHamster website" is not in any way ambiguous. This obviously is not about prudery, it's about saying people are porn actors when they clearly are not, which is obviously contrary to the purpose and goals of Wikidata (on top of just being a shitty thing to do) and also adding links to hardcore porn repositories when doing so.

[Giraffe Stapler]

I tried, but i don't think it is going to go anywhere link. The replies mostly seem to agree there is a real problem, but I don't really get the technobabble. And of course there's one person arguing about the definition of pornography, which implies to me that they completely misunderstand what is going on here since "identifier for a porn performer in the database of the xHamster website" is not in any way ambiguous. This obviously is not about prudery, it's about saying people are porn actors when they clearly are not, which is obviously contrary to the purpose and goals of Wikidata (on top of just being a shitty thing to do) and also adding links to hardcore porn repositories when doing so.

You can't talk about porn without someone accusing you of being a prude. It really doesn't matter what the complaint is, their reflexes kick in before they finish reading it.

[Bezdomni]

Contrasting Wikipedia:Village pump (T-H-L) with Template:Centralized discussion (T-H-L), the left sidebar shows that Wikidata has not felt the need to centralize important discussions.

WD also does not provide links to pageviews of specific pages. It is possible to view them, but you have to go directly to toolforge. (§)

Looking at QuickStatements (quickly), it seems trivial to pile Wikidata higher and deeper (add info via a .csv file). If you wish to bulk remove statements the process seems a bit twisted, though not necessarily complicated if it works as advertised... (§)