Wikipedia talk:Authority control integration proposal: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:43, 16 July 2012

Revision as of 21:16, 16 July 2012

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:(1) Yes http:toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Biography (2) I strongly suggest tieing VIAF to [[Wikipedia:Persondata]] which should already be present in most single-person biographies and absent from similar things that aren't (i.e. [[Bonnie and Clyde]], [[Trial of Xiao Zhen]], etc) (3) If you have (or are looking for) a gender notation, I suggest you start by talking to the folks at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies]], without whom any such scheme is unlikely to fly. [[User:Stuartyeates|Stuartyeates]] ([[User talk:Stuartyeates|talk]]) 01:21, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

::(1) Thanks for that link. It is not really what I was looking for, though. I'm aware of WikiProject Biography, but what I want is a way to search and sort through the single-person biographies on Wikipedia (having band articles and multiple person biographies mixed up with the others means the dataset provided by the WikiProject Biography talk page tags is not clean enough). Currently this depends on being able to detect articles with Persondata in them, or being able to bundle together all the birth year categories (there is no single category containing all the articles in the birth/death years category tree). This requires a level of technical expertise beyond most people (an example is [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:CBM/Sandbox&oldid=501090208 here]). Have a look at [[Wikipedia:Biographical metadata]] (a page I started a while ago) and look at the [https://toolserver.org/~apper/pd/index.php Personensuche] tool mentioned in the 'Tools' section. Having something like that available for en-Wikipedia is sort of what I'm looking for.<p> (2) I agree about making persondata more useful, but it was discouraging when it was [[Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_January_30#Template:Persondata|nominated for deletion at the start of this year]] - is the implementation of VIAF and the (unnecessary) mention of infoboxes part of a wider push to see Persondata converted or phased out as part of a longer-term agenda? I hope not. There is a sizeable chunk of the metadata 'community' (for want of a better word) that want to force infoboxes onto all biographical articles because that will make data handling easier (it will cause conflict in the long run with those who write biographies, rather than collate biographical data, and recognise that for some biographies and articles, infoboxes are not needed - this needs to be resolved sooner rather than later, preferably by having a (rare) 'non-visible infobox' option to reduce conflict in such cases).<p> (3) [[Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies]] will almost certainly have useful input on how to handle articles on transgendered people, but for the vast majority of articles it will be a simple male or female notation that has nothing to do with LGBT issues. You will note that the German Wikipedia 'Personensuche' tool has the option to search by gender. I suspect that was done without consulting the German Wikipedia equivalent of WikiProject LGBT studies.<p> So to sum up, will this VIAF system help us end up with a tool for en-Wikipedia like the Personensuche one for de-wikipedia? Is VIAF going to reinforce Persondata or be part of a push to replace it? And how would we even start trying to roll out gender notation across nearly 1,000,000 articles - can VIAF help by pulling in data to Wikiepdia from other databases? It could be done quickly, if crowdsourced and partially automated, but is there any desire or motivation to do that and can any VIAF roll-out help with that? [[User:Carcharoth|Carcharoth]] ([[User talk:Carcharoth|talk]]) 20:40, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

:::It seems to me unlikely that gender notation would be rolled out across 1,000,000 articles. It's a [[tar baby]] I'd be completely unwilling to touch and I would advise against it's use as a motivating example for the use of VIAF, for fear of contamination. I also believe that you seriously over-estimate the power of the "collate biographical data" camp in relation to the "write biographies" camp (and the "make articles very simple to edit by removing everything but paragraph text" camp). Maybe the relative influences are different on de-wikipedia. [[User:Stuartyeates|Stuartyeates]] ([[User talk:Stuartyeates|talk]]) 21:16, 16 July 2012 (UTC)