Wikidata:WikiProject LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group/Wikidata Working Hours/2024-October-29 Wikidata Working Hour

October 29, 2024 Wikidata Working Hour

Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET / 16:00 UTC / 6:00pm WAT / 6:00pm CET / 10:30pm IST (Time zone converter)

Logistics

Zoom link to join: https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/97512105605?pwd=xR2WLao73JiY6CRTGBrbKOQvQagO3y.1

Meeting ID: 975 1210 5605

Password: 504375

Agenda

Happy Halloween!
Project Series starting in November! Wikimedian Mahir Morshed will teach us all about working with lexicographical data in Wikidata!
Using the Mix'n'match tool
Spooky Topics - add your name to a topic you'd like to work on!

Logging In

Instructions provided by Christa Strickler in her presentation slides
If you log into Wikidata as usual, then click https://mix-n-match.toolforge.org/ should authenticate you via OAuth.

Mix'n'match Tool

Documentation

Mix'n'match Manual

Matching tips from the Manual

When matching entries to Wikidata items please bear the following tips in mind:

Don't guess: guessing will introduce errors into the data. If in doubt follow the link on the catalogue entry, check other catalogs at the bottom of the entry or other information (e.g coordinate location). You can always skip entries and let someone else match it, you can even move to a different catalogue you have more knowledge of.

Don't be afraid to create new items: If it isn't exactly the same concept please create a new item. It is much easier to merge two items after the matching has finished than separate an item into two separate items. E.g a World Heritage site for a city often does not cover the same area as the city itself, so a new item should be made.

Don't match to disambiguation items: Wikidata items exist for Wikipedia disambiguation pages. These items act as a list of links, rather than a concept to be matched to. Eg Bambaia (Q4853316) should not be matched, Agostino Busti (Q395600) should be.

Don't match from disambiguation items: some authority databases have disambiguation or alias pages.
- Eg RKD Artists used to have an entry for "Bambaia" that was wrongly mapped to Wikidata. (Now RKD Bambaia properly redirects to RKD Augustino Busti)
- Never match to GND "undifferentiated names"

Check the automatic matches: Whilst the automatic matching is often correct it can still get confused between similarly named items.

N/A status is exclusively for entries that can never, ever be a Wikidata item, or for known duplicates within the same catalog.

Use the 'jobs' option: The 'action' drop-down menu on any catalogue has a 'jobs' option. This gives you a list of tasks that will help with matching. For example, 'auxiliary matcher' will check the dataset for additional identifiers such as VIAF IDs and check them against existing records in Wikidata. If the automatching process has thrown up a lot of low-quality matches, there is the option to 'purge automatches'.

Today's Exercise

We'll be searching Mix'n'Match using a Halloween-inspired words and phrases. This will show you a list of all the records, imported from different databases, that include this term and hopefully provide a better sense of the matching process at work here. It will show the results regardless of status, so records that were matched automatically or manually with Wikidata items, preliminary matched items, and examples of where no Wikidata match was found (see the right hand column).

For these records, we have the opportunity to perform three different tasks, depending on the status:

Review the automatically matched records and make sure that the item is correctly matched to Wikidata. If it's not actually a match, click "Remove."
For preliminary matched records, confirm or remove the match based on the information you can glean from the records.
For records that have no match, there are a few options. With Set Q, you can search Wikidata to find an existing item to match, click Set Q, and add the existing QId to the record. With New Item, you can add the item to Wikidata. With N/A, you can reject the addition of the item from Wikidata, considering the Wikidata Notability Guidelines.