Wikidata:List generation input

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Development input

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The Wikidata development team is currently working on tools to improve list creation on Wikipedia, based on Wikidata data.

In order to understand what could be useful for you and why, we suggest you below three examples of user scenarios, in which you could recognize some of your current uses: how do you currently edit some lists on Wikipedia, which tools or processes do you use, and what can be improved.

Below is what we found out so far by talking to community members (thanks for helping us!), but we know that these might be incomplete, not as detailed as they could be or that our assumptions might not apply.

You can answer some short questions and add comments on our assumptions on each related talk page.

This input is very important to help us understand how you edit the lists on Wikipedia, and what tools could be useful for you.

Thanks to all of you who will take a few minutes to answer our questions! Lea Lacroix (WMDE), Jan Dittrich (WMDE), 28 August 2016

Scenario A: Completing a list

Example scenario: Melissa wants to improve the coverage of artworks by Edvard Munch. There are already some. Melissa has recently visited a large exhibition and bought the catalogue. Now she wants to add the missing images to the existing list on Wikipedia.

User quote: “I know the Wikipedia template syntax for tables of images (I use the same one that the Rembrandt-List of images uses). I don’t know Wikidata very well, only from maintaining sitelinks. I heard that the rest of it is cumbersome to use.”

Workflow we assume:

1. You need to have a reference of items (like an exhibition catalogue)
2. Find out which items are missing.
3. Familiarize yourself with the existing template and understand how you need to use it.
4. You prepare the data in excel/calc and convert that to a template (e.g. table generator or via string-concatination)
5. Publish list

Scenario B: Preparation – Find missing values on Wikidata

This is a relevant scenario for list generation using utilizing Wikidata since data needs to be complete (at least for a given usecase) to generate a good list from it. Though this is part of creating lists, it happens only on Wikidata and the list creation itself is not part ot this.

Example scenario: John notices that his hometown does not have a mayor listed on the hometown’s item. He wants to see which other towns and cities also lack this property and wonders if he could fix it, at least for the places in his county.

Example quote: “I could quickly find out what I wanted to know and correct the data”

Workflow we assume:

1. You “Request a query” or write a query yourself to find to find all places which are municipalities but lack a mayor
2. You find out who the current mayor of every (or some) places is
3. You add that person’s item to the property “head of government” of the city’s item
4. If no item for the major exists, you create the item.

Scenario C: Splitting a long list

Example scenario: Eloise wants to improve a list on Wikipedia which contains all episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. With 178 Entries, the list is rather long. Because of this, it should be split into manageable chunks. Example quote: Now everything is well ordered: No more looong scrolling of pages, no pages with just tiny fragments either.

Workflow we assume:

1. Decide on a meaningful criterion for splitting the list
2. Decide if you want to split the list on subpages or sections of the same page
3. If you use Listeria, use its splitting options
4. If you write the list(s) manually,you split them manually too.

Here, we have few information in the workflow. What we would be interested in would be in particular, if and how you use tools to split the list.