Wikidata

Wikidata Map – 19 months on

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This entry is part 4 of 17 in the series Wikidata Map

The last Wikidata map generation, as last discussed here and as originally created by Denny Vrandečić was on the 7th of November 2013. Recently I have started rewriting the code that generates the maps, stored on github, and boom, a new map! The old code The old version of the wikidata-analysis repo, which generated the maps (along with other … Read more

Redirects on Wikidata

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the Wikidata LogoRedirects in Wikidata are basically the same as redirects on normal wiki pages. However, they have a slightly different meaning and intention.

The main reason why we need redirects is because we want to provide stable identifiers.

The merging of two items has been a common place task since Wikidata gain momentum as often two different people or bots create items representing the same topic or concept, thus the data from one needs to be moved into the other and the empty item removed.

The problem with this is that removing the empty item of course means that one of the two identifiers no longer points to the topic or concept that is represents. This is therefore not a stable identifier..

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Wikidata map visualizations

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the Wikidata LogoIn 2013 and 2014 I made a few presentations to various groups of people talking about Wikidata.

When creating those presentations I used as many graphical representations of the data in Wikidata as possible to try and give people an clearer picture of what is already stored.

One of the best visualisations at the time was the Wikidata map created by Denny Vrandečić which came after the introduction of coordinate locations to Wikidata.

Below you can see a GIF showing the additions of the coordinate location property to Wikidata items over roughly the first 40 days of enabling the coordinates data type.

By Denny Vrandecic and Lydia Pintscher (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
 Below are some of the images that I extracted from the full map for use in my presentations. Although they are now quite outdated they are still great to look at!

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Wikimania Open Data Weekend

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Wikimania 2014 logoThe Open Data Weekend was fringe event to the Wikimania conference this year. It took place in Frobisher Room One at The Barbican Centre in London on the 5 & 6th of July and was well attended.

The weekend included:

  • Discussion about how open data, specifically Wikidata, is helping the Wikimedia movement as a whole covering its current integration with sister projects such as Wikipedia and Wikisource as well as future integration with these as well as Wikimedia Commons.
  • A general discussion on open data and the philosophy and the Semantic Web technologies.
  • Exploring various tools and applications that run and depend on the data stored within Wikidata and Wikimedia projects.

Unfortunately I am writing this post in 2015  and various details have fallen out of my mind… Luckily there is an EtherPad that contains lots of notes!

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Zürich Wikimedia Hackathon

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This year the Wikimedia Hackathon was held in Zürich, Switzerland from the 9th to 11th May 2014. The organization of the event was great, from lanyards and badges that included a USB memory stick to a city map and a ticket for public transport, Wikimedia Switzerland had prepared fantastic hackathon. More than 150 developers, engineers, sysadmins, … Read more

Spaghetti Open Data

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Spaghetti Open Data is made up of a group of Italian citizens interested in the release of public data in open formats, in order to make it easy to access and reuse. Starting in 2010 they have had yearly conferences. I was lucky enough to be invited to their conference this year (SOD14) as the keynote speaker … Read more

Media Hack Day 2014

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The Media Hack Day is an annual event held at Axel Springer | Plug & Play Accelerator in Berlin. The event for March 2014 can be found on hackerleague.org. I attended representing the Wikidata API. Also in attendance were Axel Springer, storyful, Der Spiegel, sanoma, watchmi, Getty Images and embed.ly. It was in a great location, the food and rinks were … Read more

Wikidata training @ Wikimedia UK

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I recently led an event at Wikimedia UK on 28 September 2013 entitled Wikidata Training as part of the Wikidata development team.

The event page on the Wikimedia UK wiki can be found at https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Wikidata_training.

I want to share the LONG presentation that I gave on that day using Prezi.

You can find it below, sorry if it drags on but it gets lots across.

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