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Wikidata:WikiProject LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group/Project Series/PersonalPronouns

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Background

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WikiProject Personal Pronouns was initiated with the goals of establishing and implementing ethical and logical best practices and data modeling for personal pronouns sets to Wikidata items representing human beings and fictional characters.

As of September 2025, a new data model and set of best practices have been established as a policy through a successful Request for Comment. These sessions are the project's first steps toward implementation, and will perform data cleanup on just under 7,000 existing statements using P6553 (personal pronoun).

More information on WikiProject Personal Pronouns can be found here.

Sessions

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Series Notes

Slides for all sessions


Zoom Information (for all sessions):
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Session 1 - WikiProject Personal Pronouns Overview and Series Orientation

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  • This presentation will provide a high-level overview of WikiProject Personal Pronouns' goals, past work, and implementation plans. The session will also serve as a practical orientation to the implementation work for this project, ending with a demonstration of the workflow to be used in subsequent sessions. No previous Wikidata experience is needed to participate. This session will be recorded.
Session 1 Notes
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  • 39 Attendees
  • Background:
 * Personal pronound data in Wikidata inconsistent, difficult to query, and often inaccurate
 * Project started in 2022
 * Decided to do personal pronouns first
 * Project formalized in 2023, presentations began
 * 2024 put out Request for Comment (RFC)
   * Request for comment very hard
 * 2025 RFC => New Policy
 * Complements existing policies (living people policy for example)
 * Once there was documented consensus policy was easy
  • Best Practices
 * Model to provide pronoun sets with full declension (see LGBTdb)
 * Allow multiple values, pronoun sets
 * Require consent and uphold privacy
 * Clear, self-stated sourcing
 * Account for data change over time
 * Comprehensively accommodate diverse use cases including fictional persons
 * P6553 (Personal pronoun) values often need qualifiers
   * New qualifiers needed
   * Persona/identity: applies to part (P518)=> persona (Q63615523)
   * Order of preference
 * Different declension = new lexeme
 * Non-lexeme values: unknown value, no value (Qualifier: reason for no value (P13589), Questioning pronoun use, Using any pronouns ... Will probably need new properties and items
  • Flowchart (see slides or recording)
 * Goes through initial split of real life vs. fictional characters
 * Example: Dr. Who needs a lot of qualifiers
 * Flowchart will change, but is a good guide while working through things
  • LGBTdb very useful for examples
  • Include pronoun set and references from person
  • Add "quotation" in reference to support claims
 * Don't need quotations all the time but very useful in case they disappear
  • Fictional person example
 * Ashiok, unknown gender and origin
 * If you make a new property note that in chat so people don't create dupes
 * Sourcing: Magic the Gathering has a style guide which can be used as a reference
 * Document different use cases
  • Building pronoun sets
 * Example: Paperboy Prince
 * Often uses they/them pronouns but has used god/goddess
 * Existing god/goddess is separate but probably supposed to be one pronoun set
 * Need to create new lexeme
 * Lemma: God, language: English, category: personal pronoun
 * Then can use lexeme as personal pronoun in Wikidata item (for Paperboy Prince)
 * Can link new pronoun sets to other resources (See xe as an example)
 * en.pronouns.page
 * May have some quotes
 * Homosaurus probably most stationary
 * Good idea to archive in Internet Archive if you use them
  • Scope of project
 * SPARQL query set up to see where different things are being used
 * Need curators and creators with multi-lingual background
 * Will be cleaning up data that currently exists
 * Wikidata:WikiProject_Personal_Pronouns/Implementation#Data_Cleanup Workflow
   * Add on focus list of Wikimedia Project (P5008): WikiProject Personal Pronouns
   * Bring up peculiarities/questions
  • Orientation
 * Working from spreadsheet
 * Click "enroll" link on Dashboard for each session individually
 * Spreadsheet has many tabs, please prioritize non-English tabs if you have that expertise
 * Can join WikiProject Personal Pronouns page as a participant to get pinged when there is new info
 * Working in invalid statements tab (for now), but nobody will be policing who works on which sheet when

Session 2 - Working Session I

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  • This working session will serve as the first of three such sessions. We are looking forward to collaborating with LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group members to improve the data modeling and ethics of personal pronoun representation in Wikidata by remediating legacy statements together. No previous Wikidata experience is needed to participate. If you missed the first session, we recommend you view the recording prior to attending a subsequent session.
Session 2 Notes
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  • Andrew Coltrin
  • Is He/Him/Âû two pronoun sets, or one?
  • Âû seems to be more akin to honorifics (i.e. "esquire") in this instance
  • Also lists he/him/robot as pronouns?
  • Deprecated robot (correct but not a pronoun), added no value (stated), reference for he, added honorific suffix for Âû, added Sense and item for Sense for Âû
  • Robot in pronouns area for Instagram
  • Different pronouns depending on where you look, probably worth adding both, need Lexeme for robot as pronoun
  • Florence Ashley
  • pronominal adjective, spreadsheet shows as "Latin", more likely to be "French"
  • reference 404'ed, not in Wayback Machine
  • found source with English and French language pronouns clearly listed
  • language in lexeme itself, no need to include as a qualifier in person's item
  • remember to add on Wikidata Personal Pronouns list
  • Lily Hay Newman
  • Checking references for statement in item
  • she/her/my man
  • Yomi Fash Lanso
  • no citations for either prononoun (he or Mr.)
  • Mr is title of courtesy/honorary prefix
  • not seeing self use anywhere
  • Probably good to delete rather than deprecation
  • People may add their own pronouns, notable persons are discouraged from adding to their own item
  • Q&A:
  • Q: The use of property "quotation" in a reference is new to me! So good to know. Are there other frequently-used ref properties to know for personal pronouns?

A: Nature of statement for a qualifier

  • Q: Spreadsheet has duplicates?

A: Likely case where there's more than one reference, may be able to treat them as same 

   Unique statements, mark yourself down on both 

   Whole list of people then whole list repeats (row 60, also row 128) - Crystal and Clair will clean up any duplicates 

   One row per statement, not one row per entity
  • Q: Lexeme question: Add form or sense for Au?

A: Add both

  • Q: What if you can't find a reference?

A: Up to you, if no reference to begin with and can't find one would remove 

   If reference at one point can't find one now might deprecate it 

  Remove if unreferenced and can't find a reference  

  Do take into account that if person has contemporaries that hypothesize you can add with statement nature of statement > hyphothesis or some such 

  Can follow that down into flowchart
  • Q: Lot of articles describing someone with pronouns

A: Flowchart may address this, on slide 15

  • Q: Violet Pony has 6 different pronouns

A: One has reason for preferred rank but Wikidata says that's not valid for pronouns 

   Can add qualifiers to Wikidata
  • Q: Not looking to add pronouns to everyone in the universe, may be privacy or other issues

A: Can use "no value" and reason > uses name only 

   Adding more qualifiers to flowchart
  • Q: Good to add statement on focus list of Wikimedia Project > WikiProject Personal Pronouns even if all we did was remove unreferenced personal pronoun statements?

A: Yes, this is a good idea. In the event of an edit war, this will help us point to the criteria and motivation for removing those statements.

Session 3 - Working Session II

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  • This working session will serve as the second of three such sessions. We are looking forward to collaborating with LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group members to improve the data modeling and ethics of personal pronoun representation in Wikidata by remediating legacy statements together. No previous Wikidata experience is needed to participate. If you missed the first session, we recommend you view the recording prior to attending a subsequent session.

Session 4 - Working Session III

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  • This working session will serve as the final series session. We are looking forward to collaborating with LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group members to improve the data modeling and ethics of personal pronoun representation in Wikidata by remediating legacy statements together. No previous Wikidata experience is needed to participate. If you missed the first session, we recommend you view the recording prior to attending a subsequent session.

Organizers

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Clair Kronk, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (Superraptor123)

Crystal Yragui, University of Washington Libraries (Cyragui)


Please be in touch with us on the LD4 Slack or send a message to ld4-wikidata-coord@googlegroups.com if you have any questions!

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