School data for the world
There are many different ways to contribute to Wikidata. Some of these ways involve manual edits, batch edits, and edits with tools. There are hundreds of Wikidata tools that serve many different purposes. One particularly useful tool is called Cradle. Cradle is a form-based tool users fill out to generate new Wikidata items. Forms are user-generated and are … Continued
Happy 8th birthday, Wikidata!
Wikidata is 8! Let’s celebrate! In eight short years Wikidata has grown from a central repository for all language versions of Wikipedia, to an increasingly essential fixture of the internet. Wikidata endeavors to represent the world’s knowledge as linked data. Linked data is the connective tissue that brings life and context to concepts, web pages, … Continued
10 years of learning to engage experts
This fall, we’re celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Wikipedia Student Program with a series of blog posts telling the story of the program in the United States and Canada. Saying that Wikipedia has changed a lot over the past ten years is an understatement. One of the ways that Wikipedia has changed the most … Continued
Modeling wrongful convictions on Wikidata
Wikidata continues to play a more central role on the internet by supplying digital assistants like Siri and Alex with facts. Amplifying Wikidata’s facts through these digital assistants has implications for discovering new ideas, answering questions, and representing history accurately. In a recent Wikidata course, this exact concern came up in the area of criminal … Continued
Wikidata reveals new insights about SFMOMA’s exhibition data
Art museums are not only stewards of data about their collection but also of data from other museums. All of this data can tell the story of art, art movements, and the creators of these artworks. In January I followed up with some of our Wikidata course participants at SFMOMA. I met with Ian Gill, … Continued
Wikidata at the Art Institute of Chicago
As a museum-goer, do you ever think about how art museums keep track of their collections? What do they know about the artists that made the art? What do they know about their collection as a whole? How can a museum answer questions about the gender breakdown of the artists in the collections? How can … Continued
Catering to diverse GLAM needs to improve Wikidata
The Wikidata courses that wrapped up in December made for our largest group of new Wikidata trainees so far. After six quick weeks, we covered a lot of ground — from property proposals to taxonomic grouping of Wikidata’s Q-items (What does this mean? Take a look at this tool to see how groups of people, … Continued
Bringing the community together: WikidataCon 2019
In October, 250 members of the Wikidata community gathered in Berlin, Germany for the second ever WikidataCon. It was an engaging conference, packed with updates about the project, the release of new tools, a day-long Wikibase workshop, and a special emphasis on languages and GLAM work this year. Follow this link to see recordings, notes, … Continued
Who’s interested in learning to use Wikidata?
We’re excited to announce the start of two new Wikidata courses, currently in progress. There is one intermediate course and one beginner course. We couldn’t be more pleased with the course participants. They have ambition, passion, and plenty of curiosity that will make for some exciting conversations. Learn more about them and their hopes for … Continued
Widening Wikidata’s impact
In the summer of 2019, Wiki Education started a new course under the umbrella of the Scholars & Scientists Program all about Wikidata. Similar to our Wikipedia offerings in that program, our Wikidata course trains subject matter experts on Wikidata fundamentals and encourages them to contribute to Wikidata in a structured online synchronous six-week course. We ran two … Continued