Wikidata:WikiProject LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group/Affinity Group Calls/Meeting Notes/2022-04-19

Call Details

• Date: 2022-04-19
• Topic: Entitree
• Presenter: Martin Schibel

Presentation Materials

• Call agenda
• Presentation slides

Meeting Notes

• Martin Schibel on Entitree: How does it work? and other projects if time allows
  • Started Entitree in 2020 with Orlando Groppo:  https://www.entitree.com/
  • How does it work?  Minimal backend, requests goes straight to Wikidata
  • Also on Github
    • Open source
    • Anyone can see the code
    • Contribution to the code is possible
    • Please report any issues
  • Supports multiple languages
    • No translation engine
    • Directly fetched from Wikidata
    • If label not found in particular language, will default to English
  • Research:: Can be used for family trees, company structures, concepts
  • Also making charts for educational purposes or illustrations, etc.
  • Interactive; fetch images from quite a few sources
    • Main source is Wikimedia Commons: check there first, no copyright
    • Also create a tool that detects the face (Image database), which is high quality but lots of manual work (current use is only for Entitree)
    • Another option is Geni, which is a genealogical website
    • Other options would be Instagram or Twitter for person that is still alive
    • Peoplepill is another source that it’s acquired from
  • Image Database is tool that supplies images
    • Still has a few issues/bugs that need to be resolved
    • Currently accessible here: https://images2.entitree.com/ (requires Google login)
  • Have made a bunch of themes
    • Default, vertical, horizontal, etc. (can customize other settings if the labels overlap)
  • Not only for just family trees, but also can work for different entities (example shown of pretzels (and their ingredients))
  • Settings
    • Can also change language
    • Use colors based on gender
    • Show badge; Show country flag, religion, occupation, show birth name
• Q&A
  • Comment: could be used as reviewing subclasses for potential cleanup
  • Q: Does it have more color between those two, for gender?
    • A: Would be happy to implement another color for another gender (derived from family trees, which traditionally just had the 2 sexes)
  • Q: Have thought through so many options & seems so flexible. How have you collaborated to make this so open to change?
    • A: In the beginning, there weren't many options, but loves to play around and prefers to make it more interesting. He is concerned that not many people are changing the settings.
  • Q: I’m trying to visualize subclass relationships for artwork types and tried putting in “painting” but it threw an error. (Did get it to work for “sculpture”)
    • A: It’s not really designed for other things besides family trees but does often work for other entities, so may crash if there are too many items retrieved.
  • Some people on Twitter have posted images of 40 generations!
  • Q: Are there other properties you’re considering? I could see this being interesting for “depends on software”:  https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P1547
    • A: Presenter demoed “LaTeX” during session.
  • Is partly using SPARQL. Also implemented re-fetching. At some point, it may make sense to implement caching to speed it up as it can get quite slow.
  • Would appreciate feedback on Entitree and also Image Database.
  • Q: Can we see a list of properties used by this tool?
    • A: Any property could be used, but it may not make sense if property doesn’t link to many items.
    • Follow-up Q: Thinking of a professor and their doctoral students, like an academic family tree.
    • A: Here’s some examples: https://www.entitree.com/en/doctoral_student/Q105440975 https://www.entitree.com/en/doctoral_student/Niels_Bohr
  • Q: Can you see inverses?
    • A: Someone contributed: inverse isn’t required in Wikidata for some properties.
    • A: Speaker: not a big fan of inverses because they’re redundant data. Will usually just look at one property in Wikidata. Should be able to show tree from opposite side.
    • Q: Are mandatory inverses starting to be discouraged?
    • A: From audience:
      • They’re encouraging inverse property labels rather than inverses at all (only using one direction may not capture everything)
      • They’re discouraging inverses because info can also be derived from a query.
  • Q: Have you run into situations where there are many people listed on a row (at the same level)?
    • A: Haven’t dealt with it, if there are too many people on one row would show a warning, one option is to stack children or sub-properties
    • Also looking at different node sizes.
  • Q: Do you visualize making each subclass independently collapsible?
    • A: There’s a tool called Wikidata Graph Builder: If you have many subclasses that would be an option.
    • Additionally, another tool popped up recently called Linked People that shows family relationships between entities. It is more compact in case of entities are spread out, but is more chaotic in terms of being dynamic.
  • Q: Have you shown Entitree to genealogy groups?
    • A: Have tried to promote it to different groups and communities. Mostly used for contemporary families or royal families. Have also implemented a connection to Geni but the API has stopped functioning.
  • Q: Family tree is the default and it uses multiple properties? (Sibling, etc.) The other properties you can select: those default to using that single property for the tree then.
    • A: Yes, true.
    • Q: Have you considered implementing something like that for other kinds of trees that might be of broad interest, such as academic tree: to combine properties (student, doctoral advisor, teacher relationships)?
      • A: Frankly we haven’t.
      • Q: If you plug in name of cocktail (property: made with material, sometimes it has “has part”). Thinking of entities where there might be inconsistencies or reasons for the inconsistencies.
      • A: It would be possible.
    • Other examples that audience members did on their own initiative during the meeting:
      • Jesus Christ family tree, tracing it back to Adam & Eve
      • Subsidiary of the University of Washington (Speaker comment: this often provides a nice view of government agencies or corporations.)
      • William Strahan (publisher)
      • Benjamin Franklin’s occupation