Wikidata: New Wikimedia project

[HRIP7]

DATA REVOLUTION FOR WIKIPEDIA
Wikidata will be the first new Wikimedia project since 2006

Press release.

[Volunteer Marek]

DATA REVOLUTION FOR WIKIPEDIA
Wikidata will be the first new Wikimedia project since 2006

Press release.

Hmm, my first thought when I saw your post was "that's interesting". But then I clicked the press release and the first paragraph doesn't necessarily inspire confidence, particularly given this latest Jim Hawkins bruhaha:

"For example, with Wikidata the birth date of a person of public interest can be used in all Wikipedias and only needs to be maintained in one place. Moreover, like all of Wikidata’s information, the birth date will also be freely usable outside of Wikipedia."

Like some of the other projects, it probably WOULD be a good idea if it was run by responsible people. But given how the other places have turned out (btw, as a total aside, how is Wikisource doing - that seemed to be fairly functional last I checked?) a place to post "dox" on people you don't like etc.

I'm also not clear on what this is suppose to be. Like a collection of publicly available datasets? Data on Wikipedia? This part:

"Its first goal is to support the more than 280 language editions of Wikipedia with one common source of structured data that can be used in all articles of the free encyclopedia. "

seems to be in conflict with the principle that Wikipedia, or other wikiprojects, cannot be used as a source for itself (though I guess if the way that it works is that there's a dataset and this dataset is linked to a reliable source or something...)

[Moonage Daydream]

My hat is off to the people that managed to get this going. I think that this paves the way for the future of the WMF, whether they know it or not.

In a few years, perhaps we will be able to recreate NameBase using WMF data.

[HRIP7]

Note related topic posted by Alison, in the News & Media forum:

Paul Allen funding effort to improve Wikipedia - by KING5.com

Seattle billionaire Paul Allen is supporting an effort to improve the online Wikipedia open encyclopedia project.

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence is providing 650,000 euros -- about $867,000 -- to the Wikidata project, which its creators say "will provide a collaboratively edited database of the world's knowledge."

Other supporters of Wikidata include the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Google, Inc.

[HRIP7]

Interesting article on theatlantic.com about Wikidata, by Mark Graham:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/a ... ta/255564/

This is a highly significant and hugely important change to the ways that Wikipedia works. Until now, the Wikipedia community has never attempted any sort of consistency across all languages.

Look, for instance, at the Wikipedia pages about the Bronze Statue of Tallinn (a highly controversial moment in Estonia's history that sparked one of the world's first 'cyberwars' between Russia and Estonia). The Estonian and Russian versions of that article present interestingly different versions of the very same place and events. The Arabic and Hebrew articles about Hezbollah offer perhaps an even starker contrast of the ways in which different communities of editors agree on different types of representation and truths.

Research carried out independently by Brent Hecht, myself, and others has found that each language edition of Wikipedia represents encyclopaedic knowledge in highly diverse ways. Not only does each language edition include different sets of topics, but when several editions do cover the same topic, they often put their own, unique spin on the topic. In particular, the ability of each language edition to exist independently has allowed each language community to contextualize knowledge for its audience.

It is important that different communities are able to create and reproduce different truths and worldviews. And while certain truths are universal (Tokyo is described as a capital city in every language version that includes an article about Japan), others are more messy and unclear (e.g. should the population of Israel include occupied and contested territories?).

The reason that Wikidata marks such a significant moment in Wikipedia's history is the fact that it eliminates some of the scope for culturally contingent representations of places, processes, people, and events. However, even more concerning is that fact that this sort of congealed and structured knowledge is unlikely to reflect the opinions and beliefs of traditionally marginalized groups.

We know that Wikipedia is a highly uneven platform. We know that not only is there not a lot of content created from the developing world, but there also isn't a lot of content created about the developing world. And we also, even within the developed world, a majority of edits are still made by a small core of (largely young, white, male, and well-educated) people. For instance, there are more edits that originate in Hong Kong than all of Africa combined; and there are many times more edits to the English-language article about child birth by men than women.

What does this mean for structured, semantic data in Wikipedia? If we start to rely on a singular source for our truths, it will undoubtedly in most cases make most articles more accurate and current. But it also means that in contested cases, we will likely see an even more vivid reinforcement of existing core/periphery inequalities of knowledge production. A disagreement over facts or data would no longer be confined to a specific article and language, but would most likely have to be conducted in English to an unfamiliar community of editors.

Without social structures and technologies specifically dedicated to maintaining diversity in Wikidata, the almost certain outcome is that the truths and worldviews of the dominant cultures in the Wikipedia community will win out.

[HRIP7]

Internet users love to have one go-to place for everything: Google for searches, YouTube for videos, Twitter for tweets, Facebook for social networking, Wikipedia for information.

The above caveats remind me of what Larry Sanger said here, a few years ago:

Similarly, Wikipedia articles are now well-known for being the #1 Google search result for many popular searches. Any website with that much reach is, like it or not, very influential. That is, in effect, practical epistemic authority. That is real authority, given to anyone who has the time and patience to work on Wikipedia and do the hand-to-hand battle necessary to get your edits to "stick" in Wikipedia articles. That power, to define what is known about a general topic, was formerly reserved only to the professional intellectuals who wrote and edited encyclopedias, and more broadly to experts generally speaking. And again, of course, no one checks anybody's credentials before they get on Wikipedia. So amateurs are to some extent displacing experts, in the new politics of knowledge. [...]

Already, for far too many students, Wikipedia is their only source of reference information. If humanity were to produce a similarly giant encyclopedia that were really reliable, you can just imagine how it would probably be received by the general public. It would become, essentially, the world's textbook and omnipresent reference library. There would be a general presumption that what it says is correct, and that if anyone asserts something in contradiction to it, they would have to explain in as much detail as they would have to do if they contradicted the Encyclopedia Britannica today. Sure, a good encyclopedia can be wrong; but it usually isn't. Unlike Wikipedia, it's innocent until proven guilty.

This is frightening, I say, precisely because of how powerful such a resource would be.

If you follow that line of thought, there is a sense in which there really could be a Wikipediocracy, i.e. government by Wikipedia (or, rather, Wikimedia). A kind of "world domination" through control of information, with Wikidata a major plank in that. Looking at Wikimedia's internal governance, government by Wikimedia may be one of the scariest ideas ever.

[HRIP7]

Someone's brought up the Graham piece on the recently renamed Foundation-l, now named Wikimedia-l:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wi ... 19688.html

It will be interesting to see whether any useful discussion results.

[EricBarbour]

Not a word so far, but as usual.....every time I see someone post something the slightest bit "controversial"
on that list, the first person to answer is usually Gerard. In his usual troll fashion. I am truly sick of him.
He thinks he knows everything, and actually knows very little. And expects the universe to revolve around him.

No, David, I'm sorry, the BBC doesn't do things the way YOU want. When you become director general of the BBC, then you can have some say.

[Zoloft]

Not a word so far, but as usual.....every time I see someone post something the slightest bit "controversial"
on that list, the first person to answer is usually Gerard. In his usual troll fashion. I am truly sick of him.
He thinks he knows everything, and actually knows very little. And expects the universe to revolve around him.

No, David, I'm sorry, the BBC doesn't do things the way YOU want. When you become director general of the BBC, then you can have some say.

Information commissar?

"That's not in line with our POV, Winston. Go have some Victory Gin."

[powercorrupts]

the WMF are just trying to control the whole world. Don't worry about it.