(Andrew) Welcome to the Infoboxes panel.
How many people here know what an infobox is in our community?
Good, but even if you don't, the 30-second introduction is
infoboxes are what you normally see when you look at an article in Wikipedia,
in the upper right hand corner and it probably tries to give you
most of the facts about a topic.
You're starting to see infoboxes more than in just Wikipedia articles.
If you saw one of our presenters here, Mike Peel, got an award yesterday
for his work on infoboxes and Commons, and he'll talk about that.
We're also going to have other folks talk about their experiences
in implementing infoboxes that are driven by Wikidata.
So, even without Wikidata as part of the equation,
there have been some pretty famous, I don't want to say battles,
but let's say disputes and conflicts between Wikipedia editors
about the appropriateness of infoboxes and their role in different projects.
So, we've been having a session like this for the last few years
talking about what the interaction should be between our communities
in Wikidata and Wikipedia and Commons and other places.
So, hopefully this will give you a pretty good set of views
on where things are right now and where they're going,
from Wikipedia editions that are heavily using infoboxes
and ones that are a little bit more reluctant to do that.
So we have our presenters today, Harmonia, Tpt, Amador and Mike Peel.
So, we're going to start with Harmonia, is that right?
- Or Tpt and Harmonia? - Yes, both of us.
- We’re presenting together. - Okay very good, thank you.
And they'll introduce themselves and talk about their infobox story.
Hi, everyone.
So I am Harmonia Amanda, I don't have my name tag.
I think we have very different expectation and goals
whether we are really small communities, bigger communities
or the really, really big communities like Commons and everything.
What Tpt and I are working on are, Automatic Wikidata Infoboxes
for really, really small Wikipedias.
So Wikipedias without anyone knowing LUA in their community
or really--or not having regular workshops or nobody meeting up in real life
like the really, really small communities.
And Tpt will start with the technical side of it.
Yes, so, what we wanted to have is templates without--
It's for very small Wikis, so without having to do any work, saying,
"Hey, we want to have an infobox about a person.
Where should we display the birthdate and the birthdays?"
It's a piece on [inaudible] on Wikidata and so on.
So maybe something that is fully automated and just works, you just have to copy
a LUA module on your Wiki and then the templates
according to the LUA module and then it should just work
without any configuration.
And so it's what we did, so it's basically a single LUA module
with something like 200 lines of LUA.
The only configuration we have in this is just a list of properties
we don't want to display.
So it's mostly it's properties that are internal to Wikimedia projects
and then it creates an infobox from this based on the Wikidata content.
So it's already deployed on 13 Wikipedias right now,
and we call it Databox.
So there is [inaudible] infobox in one very small Wikipedia.
Sorry, I don't remember the language.
- (Harmonia) It's in Hausa. - (Tpt) Thank you.
So, every some examples you see basically the ideas in infobox is,
it displays a label
of the Wikidata item and then you have--
if there is an image on the Wikidata you displayed,
then you have a subtitle with the Wikidata type.
And then you have the list of properties sorted just like Wikidata.
And at the end is our geo coordinates, you have a map and that's it.
So it's very simple.
And it works for any kind of entities.
So it's just not for a person, place or such.
You don't have to configure it. It just works.
So it's not the nicest infobox.
But it's very simple and you see it in four different languages.
I believe it works quite well,
but there is still a lot of work for languages actually.
It's to translate the labels and Harmonia's is going to talk about it.
(Harmonia) Yeah.
The problem with the infoboxes in general,
it's what the Indian community talked yesterday in their talk
so if you want that specific thing you should [inaudible] the stream
for that presentation they did yesterday.
Or to fill the knowledge gap in Wikidata.
And the problem is not the technical part of it.
It's that if you don't add any labels in your language,
we will follow the MediaWiki fall back languages
and at some point, it will end up in English.
So the problem with these really small communities
is actually auto-created dynamic to translate things so we can use data
from Wikidata.
And that's in auto-create your own community rules.
So on the 13 Wikipedias, we have very different usables.
So we have Wikipedia, we make the choice to only have the infoboxes in drafts.
So you have the data, you can write the article
but you don't see it on the main space.
You have Wikipedia who makes the choice,
"Hey, if two third of the infobox is in my language,
then I want it on the main space and so I know
which, what do I need to translate," and their Wikipedia would trust
only infoboxes entirely in their languages.
So the idea is to start with labelathons
so you can use--you can, oh, this next slide.
Oh, no it's--
Yeah, sorry.
You can see on the side we made a SPARQL query for the Hausa Wikipedia
for the most used properties on Wikidata which don't have labels in Hausa.
And you can see, that the first property is language used
which is not that much used on Wikidata
because they translated everything else.
And that was not that much an amount of work.
So you can start small, build a community,
start using data on Wikidata.
And if you have a bigger community, you want infoboxes while doing
cooler things than that and that's the Catalan projects.
- (Harmonia) And that's yours. - (Amador) Thank you, thank you.
First of all--
(applause)
First of all, I apologize for my English.
If you are expert in rare languages,
this is your opportunity.
While I will talk about two things that are infoboxes,
but...
several infoboxes and our [inaudible]
and you can play with them.
And I prepared an analysis that you can see in the presentation.
In order to play, I show some but no standard in the process--
in the look and feel but in the process.
We started three years ago,
where we implemented Wikidata in--Wikidata--
inside the infoboxes.
Our objectives were these, take advantage of Wikidata
in that moment was emerging.
Use these skills as harmonized
the skins of the layout...
Reduce the obsolescence of the information because everything was manual parameters
and avoid particular solutions because there are millions more templates,
it's easier,
and everybody has its own template for its own article,
and well, we have thousands of articles
with a--Sorry.
Those itself infoboxes with just 10, 20 articles.
The problems are these, the people doesn't trust in the Wikidata
doesn't want to change,
and they want to maintain
typical or local information that is not in Wikidata.
Now three years, three years after,
the solutions that we applied and the state of the art that we have
is, we say, "Okay, we will keep the manual parameters,
if you wish."
But as Wikidata gets the information,
I will erase the manual parameter because you don't need it.
Okay.
Now 80%--82%
of all Wikipedia articles
have a Wikidata infobox.
Sixty percent of the articles have just the call to the template
without any other manual parameters.
We agree 90% of the all the articles
have the harmonizing and some
similar skill and look and feel.
When the [inaudible] language changes the priority we say,
manual is before the Wikidata but in some moment we say,
this manual probably is absolute.
So we will change the priority.
This is a question about there's an exclusion I need, I want to--
I believe that it's important to have too many infoboxes
or he has one infobox.
Well, we believe that it's important to have one infobox for each,
great concept.
A person, a building or something like this
but not one for its kind
or one for all kinds of solutions.
This is our figures, the important thing is this--
this is with four infoboxes
we cover 50% of four articles.
With four infoboxes,
we cover [inaudible] % more.
And with all, we cover 80%.
Look at that long tail that we can-- we have no solution
because they are very specific
is 83 infoboxes
only four cover 9%.
So the most important, if you [inaudible] for these options,
you have a great cover.
The look and feel of the infoboxes is like this.
You have here and another is...
to arrive
and these infoboxes are multilingual
and respond to--
you can explain the-- can tell them the parameter--
the language in two ways.
One is when the preferences of the Wikipedia,
or if you don't want to follow the preferences,
and will force another language,
you can call the template
with the parameter of line, equal and the language you wish.
All the translations are made via Wikidata labels.
So, when--
Let me show one example of--
if some--
if your label doesn't exist in your language
in Wikidata--
it appears not in this case, sorry.
It appears here, a pencil,
and you push the pencil and it goes to Wikidata in order to enter the label,
and then it's running.
Yes.
Ten seconds.
What is our current goals?
We have a solution implemented in our Wikipedia.
The community, right, is happy.
And no one thinks again in the old solutions.
So as a WIkidata team told me
[inaudible] before.
It's live at the talk in Catalan.
So, I translate, I change it to be multilingual
and now this solution is near to be a plug and play
in any other Wikipedia.
Until now,
other languages, copy it or Wiki model
and...
infoboxes but no were multilingual,
they need to translate
and then they have their own copy and launch the synchronizing
with our revolution.
But now, this is not necessary
or if you made this kind of migration
and don't touch
or every [inaudible] with it,
we--sorry--
every update with it.
You are good.
Okay.
And Mr. Mike Peel. to explain enwp.
(applause)
(Mike) Okay, I've just got a couple of slides
and one on Commons, one on English Wikipedia.
So the first is on Commons.
So this is a single infobox.
It's actually two infoboxes, it's separate in what's coded for people
and for everything else.
But it generally works for every single topic.
And it's deployed on Commons where it's a very different community
from most Wikipedias
that it needs to be multilingual out-of-the-box.
So you need to be able to change the language, if you interface
and everything changes in the infobox, which Wikidata lets you do.
So before this, before WIkidata, Commons did not really have infoboxes
in categories, now it can.
It's currently deployed in about two and a half million,
not quite two and a half million but hopefully in a few weeks time
we'll get there.
And that's had about seven million Common categories so we're less
than halfway to go actually and so please keep adding it
if you spot a category without it.
It tries to add everything it can, which is useful but try to do it
in as compact form as possible
because you don't want to take up space because the main thing of Commons
is all the media files.
So you want to highlight those, and then this infobox gives you
additional context on the topic down the side.
And so it shows, the image it shows,
the main properties and map of where it is.
Importantly it links to tools, which you might find useful at the bottom.
So things like, Wiki Shoot Me! to find nearby pictures
and other things like that.
It's something that can work on other Wikis.
It's not very portable.
It relies on about half of dozen different templates
and LUA codes at the moment.
I'm hoping to compact that, so it is more portable
so you can use it elsewhere, if you want.
It's now set up so that the main template is actually
a configuration template.
So you can say we want
the width of this to be 200 pixels or 300 pixels,
you can define that in here.
You can say, "We want a map, we want this coordinate system."
So it's got some flexibility to cope with and different cases.
It is actually installed on English Wikipedia
and you can sort of use it there
but someone will come along within a few hours and change it
to a different template, so
you can see how it looks on English Wikipedia, at least.
It is also on a few other ones.
English Wikipedia is a difficult one.
So it has a lot of existing content.
The advantage of Commons is there wasn't that much content
in the categories to start with, so you could go in
and add a lot more very easily.
English WIkipedia already has that.
So if you are using an infobox in Wikidata
you're normally replacing existing content
and editors don't like that.
There also seems to be a feeling that in the English Wikipedia
it can act as a check against Wikidata.
So if you keep things independent, than you can cross check
and catch vandalism, which sort of works as long you don't mind
all the extra burden of having to handle two lots of the same data.
One in a structured form, which is lovely
and one in an unstructured form which is a pain.
There's also a lot more different templates.
So there's about hundred templates that infobox templates are used
in Wikidata at the moment.
That's out of thousands on English Wikipedia.
Converting all those will take a long time.
There's about 2,000 infoboxes that are entirely drawn from Wikidata
which is a small fraction of the number of articles there but...
It's been a long way to get there.
And it's lot more demanding on, again, exactly like formatting
so you can't have anything which doesn't look quite right
or show cue numbers and things like that.
You've got to have local override.
You've got to make sure you only showing referenced information.
All of that is built into the code which underlays these infoboxes
which is WikidataIB, which is what Doug Taylor's been working on,
user access.
And you can use that, it's very modular.
So each bit of the infobox is constructed separately,
so you don't even need to know LUA to create these infoboxes.
I don't really know LUA at all, so.
You can just use the existing templates structure to do that.
Which makes it quite nice to deploy and to fiddle around with.
Yeah, that's basically all I've got.
So most of the session, hopefully will be questions from you
and hopefully, we can give some answers.
Thanks for listening.
(applause)
(Andrew) Let's make sure we have both microphones working here.
You want to test that, make sure it works.
Does that microphone work?
Second one?
- Does it work? - Testing.
- Yeah. - Great.
Alright, great.
Well we love to hear some questions and also,
if you've had experiences with information boxes
and other communities,
we'd love to hear that, so.
(audience 1) Yeah, my case has more WIki.
And we have 10 to 25 editors.
So, do I need to know LUA
to implement Wikidata template?
(Amador) To whom? To me?
(audience 1) To all the people.
Anybody can answer, that's okay.
(Harmonia) Okay.
That's actually why we made three presentations in one in that,
if nobody in your community can do any LUA work at all
then the solution is the one Tpt and I made.
But this one is
you can't easily make your own preferences.
So we deal with all the technical parts.
But there is drawback to that.
If you have someone locally, who can say,
"Eh, this looks good but we have actually this kind of problem in all language."
Like for example, we have problems with gender language
which are not shown female labels
which is actually not a complicated thing to find in LUA
but you need to know the LUA codes to find that.
So someone who doesn't know your language won't think of that
if they are coming from a language which doesn't have this problem.
So see if you have someone who know LUA,
you can make more personalization to have something
which looks better on your Wikipedia,
which is what the Catalan Wikipedia is doing.
They have skin layouts which are really...
integrated with the rest of the layout of Wikipedia
which you can't do when you don't know any LUA at all.
But you have different kinds of solution,
depending on what your community is right now.
(audience 1) Can I copy the code,
which is already there in Catalan Wikipedia to my Wikipedia,
the code, to make a new template or something like that?
Actually our solutions has two labels.
The model Wikidata,
that they say is able to handle the access
to the Wikidata and recovery
[inaudible] values, [inaudible] values, qualifiers and so.
And the level presentation, the presentation level
that is made by Wiki template is in Wikicode, okay.
So, our model now is running in seven or eight WIkipedia difference,
that they have their own solutions,
call it this model but the presentation is their own.
Okay.
If you have some solution like this, you can get the old model.
However, if you don't have a good solution in that template
in the presentation,
you can take both, a model and other template, okay.
Because if you get and change the language, change your language,
it runs immediately.
Okay.
(Andrew) So, to be clear your solution is LUA based, you have to take it all,
you handle all the technical parts.
But since you have a split in two layers, you can still tweak it
at the Wikicode level to customize it.
Does that make sense?
We split in two because...
the number of...
details able to modify LUA is decreasing.
(Andrew) Right.
And we concentrated in a LUA model, everything that is considered
can be considered a black box.
And the changes people have is related with the presentation.
"I don't like this color, I want this upper and this other down,"
all these kind of things is made in templates.
So I made--I modified the template but there are several editors
that can modify the templates too.
(Andrew) Great and then Mike, how does yours--
Yeah, but, but... (laughter)
I'm sorry.
That's the part.
I think most of the people who are at the WikidataCon
are actually coming for communities which know Wikicode.
We made data box for all--
especially for African languages but I think it should be in on many
minority languages.
But we made that for the [inaudible] Wikipedia, for the Hausa Wikipedia
who are actually on the Hausa Wikipedia.
Hausa is actually the language spoken by millions of people.
But the Wikipedia have less than 4,000 articles.
And they don't have people knowing even Wikicode
because they are editing by phone and things, so.
It's like Wikidata describe the projects we presented on the first day
and everything.
So the really, really small communities
have actually really different expectations
from communities who are actually really Wikipedian already
and who have their own templates and their own personalization.
And they want the code but they don't know any code at all.
(Andrew) Right, right, that's great. Mike.
The ones on Commons and English Wikipedias
tend to build up using WikidataIB
so that there's the individual parameters that you fetch.
And that's all in LUA but then you're calling that from the Wiki text.
So I don't know LUA.
So all those infoboxes--these all are constructed in Wikitext
and that's possible.
The good thing with all these different combinations is you can pick
which one you like the best and just use that.
Or you use multiple ones on the same Wiki.
Or--yeah.
It's all drawing information from the same place
that's the important thing.
So we all share the same data set.
If [inaudible] a little.
So you have a lot of people that knows LUA or Wikicode,
it doesn't matter.
If you have a low people able to do that, you must choose
the better solution for you.
(Andrew) It's amazing how far we've come in the last two years.
That we actually have a choice of a really good solutions, that's great.
(Danny) Hi, thank you.
I'm Danny, I'm from the Wikimedia Foundation.
I think that there are actually some problems that need to get solved
in regards to the distrust that Wikipedians have
that are on the Wikidata side and not on the Wikipedia side.
So it's not just about resistance of change.
I will tell you a story.
I was talking to Lydia at Wikimedia about this
and sort of walked through a little scenario.
Because we were in Stockholm, we tried--the examples that we used
was the population of Stockholm.
So let's say I'm from English Wikipedia, and I say that it's *x* million.
And then I come back later and I see that that has been changed to *y* million
because it's--
that was done by somebody on another Wikipedia in another language.
How do I know where that comes from and who did it and what the source was?
So I click through to get to the Wikidata item
and then looked at that property
and it actually turned out that somebody had very recently--
this was a coincidence,
but somebody had very recently had changed the population of Stockholm.
And the source that they used led to a 404 error.
So in other words I can't--
And that person spoke German, and so it would be difficult for me
to talk to the person, asked them like,
"What kind of source was that? Why did that change?
Is that actually an update or is it just a mistake?"
So I said like, I know this is a coincidence,
like I just happened to pick this example
but 100% of the things I tried have this problem.
And that's a really difficult thing to figure out.
And there's other problems with references on Wikidata as well.
There's tainted references like Lydia spoke about earlier,
but there's also circular references,
where I believe a lot of the initial import came from Wikipedias
and so the source just says Italian Wikipedia.
And that's a thing, though.
Like I know that everybody knows, but that's an actual real thing.
We can't have it
on the big WIkipedias that the infobox for every page
doesn't have sources anymore.
It's just like from Italian-- like Italian Wikipedia is sourcing itself.
- Can I answer some of that? - (Danny) Yes, please do.
And so looking at the English Wikipedia infoboxes,
they aren't referenced. (laughter)
That's kind of a problem.
So you need to look into the--
(Andrew) You need traditional infoboxes.
Traditional infoboxes, not the Wikidata ones.
Forget the Wikidata ones here.
If you want to find out where the information is,
in the infobox you need to look through the whole article
and find it and pull it out and that's difficult.
Wikidata does support references.
We need to use those more.
And in particular, when you're importing on the English Wikipedia,
you only import referenced information
and that's excluding these sources stated in English Wikipedia.
That's ignored.
So it's only if it's a good reference, then it's used.
So there's some ways of doing that,
but Wikidata does have a long way to go before everything is referenced.
And I think there is a bias here on the English Wikipedia
in that it's the biggest Wikipedia which is...
with more information.
But we actually run through with the same problem
on the French Wikipedia
when we started, we automated infoboxes
and people start following.
When there is discrepancies between Wikidata and Wikipedia,
which one is right?
And it was 90% Wikidata.
So Wikidata was way better than Wikipedia and we supported wrong information,
obsolete information and everything that nobody on Wikipedia
had supported for years.
So I think the numbers are less for the English Wikipedia
than for other Wikipedias.
But the French Wikipedia is not a small one,
but Wikidata was way better.
So I think it's not 90% for the English Wikipedia,
but I think when these discrepancies and we have tools to do that.
Like, hey, this manual value is conflicting with the value from Wikidata.
When these semantic templates
on the code like for tables of...
population which you have in tables,
which are sometimes depending on the article
as with semantic marker.
You can use the semantic marker and say,
the value are from infobox is not--
So we have technical means to track some of that
and to put this where it's originating from.
We did that, welcome to French Wikipedia and Wikidata statistically is right.
But on the English Wikipedia, I think it's a little less.
But I think it's actually a good thing to have a way to spot
that there is a discrepancy and a reference problem.
And yeah, Mike Peel said that unless it's the biggest Wikipedia,
we only use reference statements and the import
from stating with Italian Wikipedia are not considered as references.
(Andrew) It's kind of a relic of the initial import that we did,
but you're right it's not acceptable as a reference statement
and most people are trying to get rid of those.
(Danny) Yes, it's just that it just needs...
(Andrew) You need, you need--
(Danny) That's a problem that needs a strategy on Wikidata.
Like how are we going to clean that up in different references?
I agree.
But this is out of this presentation, no?
What's your proposal?
What do you propose?
- (Danny) I... - Clean Wikidata?
- Close Wikidata? I don't know. - (Danny) I just wanted to point out
that the distrust by people on some of the big Wikis
is actually based on real concerns about references that--
Yeah, that's-- the references problem starts in 2013 because the references
on Wikidata was new and we couldn't deal with complicated references
at the time like technically on the Wikidata side.
So we had like very bare references,
and I think some Wikipedians are still stuck on that
but Wikidata is in 2019 now.
And we have good references on many things.
(Andrew) We're going to go to the next question
but just to make sure people know, I think a lot of people
in English Wikipedia and other large languages
that are resistant to some to some of this,
they'd make the argument that an error in Wikidata
is magnified by these infoboxes.
But the number of fact checkers is also magnified, right.
So you see it as both ways like if you have one place
to fact check and reference, you solve the problem
for hundreds of editions at the same time, right, so.
(audience 2) Okay, so with the previous topic
about how to implement data, we in the Basque--
we in the Basque Wikipedia, we adopted the Catalan system.
Aside maybe from scratch, when you do something incrementally
as the Catalans did, it's a lot of work
but I say this is from scratch,
I notice how long it took
for me to do that.
So if you go to Wikidata, you have the acronym of O,
[inaudible], as one hour Wikidata template system
or a fully automatic system and is actually one hour.
it's telling everything you need for a template to work.
One, I mean, or biography or city or one of them.
So implementing the five, six most used templates
will take you like ten hours of work.
I mean it's like something you can handle easily
in one week of volunteering and you have it done.
So sometimes it's like, "Oh, but we need a lot of templates,
we need a lot of things."
It's quite straightforward.
If you are not at Wikipedia with only ten articles
and no templates because then you need
the coordinates, the model of coordinates, these kind of things.
But if you have some development, it will take like one hour,
two hours work to do that, it's quite easy.
And I think the others will be also like one hour, two hours,
it's not-- maybe yours is 30 minutes.
It takes about two minutes.
- (audience 2) That's it, it's quite easy. - (laughter)
Yeah, what I said with databox is that the problem with databox
is not installing it.
It's translating and adding data to Wikidata.
To have your property in Hausa, that's the work.
That's not making the infobox.
It's making the labelathons and the translation and everything.
That's the work.
So it's a very different kind of problem than the English Wikipedia,
where most of the time have the labels or are translated easily.
(audience 3) Thank you.
I wanted to make you aware of something that's going to be beneficial to this,
it's not directly related to infoboxes but it's a proposal that I and Amir
and a couple of other people have been working on
for quite some time now around a central repository
for templates and modules.
So at the moment, if you have a module that you've written in, for example,
in the English Wikipedia and you want to use it
on the Catalan Wikipedia or some minority language Wikipedia,
some of those, you have to copy across the code.
And then when the code is improved on the English Wikipedia,
the improvement typically doesn't get copied across
or it gets copied across sometime later.
So the idea is to have a central repository
where LUA modules can be held and used by every Wiki
in the same way that you hold an image on Commons or a piece of data
on Wikidata.
So there is a very long draft proposal in MediaWiki
and I will put the address of that on the Etherpads
when I hand the microphone back
- and can get a web connection. - (chuckles)
We would like your comments and questions on that proposal.
It is going to take a very long time before this can be implemented
because it'll be quite a considerable change to the way
that the underlying MediaWiki software works.
But when it comes in, it will make this reuse of code
by minor Wikipedias much more easy.
Great, thank you, Andy.
Go ahead.
(Tpt) Yes, so actually the link is here for the Global Template proposal.
I just did not have time to talk about it.
But yes, I think it would be tremendously useful
so if you could talk to Wikimedia Foundation people
and say, "Hey, we need to make this proposal happen."
- Yes, it's a link to the proposal. - [inaudible]
(Tpt) Yes.
(audience 4) Excuse me, can you say why you think it's--
No, no, no, no, no, it's not the same.
- (audience 3) Not the same? - Maybe it's similar.
(Mike) This is off topic, so let's not spend so much time on it.
(audience) Yes.
This will be incredibly useful but not yet.
Take a look at the Etherpad. Andy will leave a note there.
Andy, to answer to you,
maybe you talk about a project
called Multilingual Templates-- it's a model that is a project
and initiative to make a repository that you can subscribe to there.
Anytime the owner or the creator
of this model or this template update,
all the subscribers receive their own copy
if they don't change it, the previous one.
So I don't know if finally it will be this solution or another
- but this initiative or this idea, - Idea.
I think that all of us agree.
(audience 3) I believe that Andy was talking about Amir's proposal
so it's this one that is really having just like Wikidata
but for templates.
- (audience 5) [inaudible] - (audience 3) Yes.
(audience 5) Because you have things lie the LUA code to verify
the little check that you got a nice balance.
[inaudible]
(Andrew) You got a question.
(audience 6) First of all, I wanted to thank you all
for your great projects and all of the work you're doing.
And also the great idea of the central repository,
it's a good thing.
I'm from the German Wikipedia and we have a thing there with--
where we're trying to modify most of the infoboxes
to actually support data from Wikidata and we ran into a problem,
more of a cultural problem, actually,
where we are importing data from Wikidata and by default
if nothing is entered in the infobox,
at the Wiki value pair where it should be.
So if you leave the position empty, for example, the coordinates of something
then the data comes from Wikidata and if you put something in,
it's a local override.
And we run into a problem that sometimes people actually
want nothing in there.
They want--they don't want to change the data in Wikidata,
but they don't want the data from Wikidata.
And they just want to override it so it says nothing.
And we seem to have no real solution for a use case scenario like that.
We thought about using like magic words to suppress the actual information
of Wikidata but I don't know if you have similar problems in your projects
and how you tackle them.
Yeah, so we have exactly the same problem on French Wikipedia
and what the infoboxes are currently doing is that if you put hyphen,
you just remove the Wikidata value.
It's kind of a hack but it works.
(audience 6) Interesting.
And the one I use as a first field parameter
and you pass the name of a field leader and want to show and it just hides it.
There are ways of doing this.
It's something that happens on English Wikipedia as well.
Things like religion, people don't want to show that in articles,
they can just turn it off.
(audience 6) Really cool, so.
So as we were saying, you have multiple solutions
depending on the multiple problem and you can--on the French Wikipedia,
we have some fields which are then in the infoboxes itself,
like if the infoboxes can be used for several kinds of things,
we all think, "Well, if it's this specific thing, then this field
shouldn't show but it should show if it's this other thing.
Or manually, in this article specifically, I don't want this field."
So a technical solution exists and we can probably implement that
on the German Wikipedia, no problem.
(audience 6) Really great, and I'm going to look into that.
To answer you, we can...
in order to blend it, you can hide any parameter.
But in each use, article by article.
Now, we are preparing a new release
if this release is--
use it another Wiki pages
in order to be able to make some kind of a customization.
For instance, what is the color of the headers?
We have our color code but maybe you'll want another,
I don't need to change the code to do that
or what are the units that you want the results
of the measurements?
I use centimeters and meters but maybe you want feet and--
So all these kinds of things, we want to make a list
of logical things that another Wikipedia
wants to customize
and this defines as a parameter that you can change
and are not changing the version of the infobox
because if you change the infobox, you lose the connection
with the synchronization.
By the way, don't tell too many people but Wikidata infobox
is on the German Wikipedia.
(laughter)
(audience 7) Once more.
(audience 8) Thank you, Mike.
(audience 9) That is a working mechanism that, okay, we have
a central repository of infoboxes it's a great idea.
But as a working--if we have a central repository
of documentation, of these infoboxes in meta or MediaWiki
or in a central place, so everybody can benefit.
And so if I can put that page into my watch list.
If something changes, I will get a notification
so I can update my template.
That is easy, there is no need for a proposal for that thing.
We can create a central repository of documentation.
I don't think there's much documentation at the moment,
so, yeah, that's important to do.
Yeah, well, actually it's eight pages for databox,
way longer than the code, itself because it's for a very smart community,
with no technical background.
But I think we have a tragic lack of documentation in templates,
in general.
Really, a tragic lack.
And I do think that Wikidata infoboxes are not worse.
Not by a lot.
Because we are working on so many common LUA modules.
We are always using the same LUA bricks.
So some of this documentation actually probably exists
in at least the French Wikipedia but we have a translation problem.
We have--yeah, so a central repository would be great,
but we will run into a translation problem.
(audience 10) Dare I just throw out here in the room that we probably
should have Wikidata items for all of these infoboxes
and then we can have the documentation on Wikidata,
where you have multilingual translations that are a lot easier to do.
Yeah, we actually have the templates for the translation of the documentation
of databox but people are not translating.
So yeah, you could translate easily, you can help me translate that
in your languages so people can use.
But I can't translate that in Hausa, I don't speak Hausa, though.
In any case, when we talk about the accommodation of the template,
we are thinking in a large accommodation,
the display in each parameter and each value that you can put,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Our experience is 60% of all of articles has just info [inaudible] person
info [inaudible] building, info [inaudible] no parameters.
So the unique documentation that you need and we don't have,
very well, I confess, is that was the model
of that data that you have to fill in Wikidata.
Not how the template runs because you do not need it anymore.
So we have stories-- oh, sorry, just rather quick--
stories of Catalan and Basque who are like 80% infoboxes in Wikidata
which is incredible.
English at the other end of the spectrum.
Other languages, I love to hear from other folks
after we hear from Jane, about your experiences.
French is somewhere maybe in between... yeah.
(Jane) Okay, the wonderful Sandra Fauconnier is not
in the room, I don't think,
did this amazing page on Wikidata for the visual arts
where she actually put in all of the things
that are actually considered artworks.
So you could have a page on Wikidata that has your infobox
with all of the fields.
And then the fields can-- those are actual things in Wikidata.
So that's why I talk about multilingual translation
that is automatically done for you and you just put it in a huge table.
Yeah, that actually is the same problem we have on other projects,
we talked about the WikidataCon, and I think it's a running thing,
like Wiki projects, I think are making data modeling,
saying, hey, we should do that on Wikidata
and we have outreach problem in that Wikidatians which are not working
on this specific subject don't know how the data is modeled.
And Wikipedians know that even less and everything else.
So most of it already exists in some form.
But people who need it don't know they need it
so they don't search for the help pages which exist.
Yeah, it's not only a Wiki and infoboxes problem.
It's a more general problem
we ran [into] several stations today and yesterday, so.
Very good.
Any other reports or folks, or Shani?
(Shani) Well, not report but a question to the people in the room.
A show of hands if we can, for a second, how many think that
a central repository of infoboxes
is needed?
Okay, let's do the opposite.
Are there any people who oppose?
Okay, so, Andy, this is for you, why did you say it's going to take
- a long time to-- - (laughter)
It's going to take a long time because the people working
on infoboxes want it and the people using the infoboxes
don't want it.
I have a--
Okay, yeah, so on a technical level, making a--if you want to do it properly
so having one Wiki, where you put infobox codes
and you're having other Wikis taking the code
and doing some proper rendering, it's kind of hard on the technical level.
So it's going to--so it's basically like implementing Wikidata--
just like, for example, getting Wikidata content
into Wikipedia was hard on a technical level,
it's going to be the same and so it's something that
a volunteer, for example, couldn't do at all.
So that's why it takes a long time.
(audience 11) So it's a WF thing?
It's definitely a WMF thing, yes.
- [inaudible] - Yeah.
(Andrew) You can help with that.
But it's software release engineering,
basically, if you think about it, right.
So it gets pretty complex.
I understand and I agree with you that it's not easy.
It's not easy.
Maybe it's a dream, a repository central,
repository et cetera, et cetera.
However, when I try to do
an installation pack,
the problems that I found is not only the translation problem
that the language is different but even that the--
the modus operandi is different.
For instance, the [inaudible] model exists from several years.
All of us copy it from the English version
but after that, we have to change it
in order to adapt to our measurements.
So these kind of things
or the model or the elements
to put in the repository
is prepared to do that or the repository is not the solution.
It's not only a question of translating the language
but also that the running way
must be different for each one of necessities of each user filter.
If you don't take care of all of them,
the model will know universally.
And this is the difficulty, not the question of how
a repository with automatic replication--
No, this is a technical solution.
Okay.
Actually on the French Wikipedia, one of the biggest, biggest
and longest war edits before Wikidata was a project
was that we have three different infoboxes for our cities.
And there were infoboxes with data with cities,
totally manually, so no Wikidata question here.
And we have war edits about these templates for years.
It was a very big thing because people were like,
"No, I prefer information this way" or, "I prefer information this way."
And we have a big repository.
We are multiplying that for every template across every Wiki and for community
who have edits for years and years and years.
So we have a technical problem to do that.
And we will fight with a very, very big push
against it by people who are not creating the infoboxes
or using the infoboxes
but will just be really happy that their specific field,
they are used to have at the top of the infobox will get in the middle.
That's what we will fight against.
Because everyone wants a repository.
But everyone wants a repository of their template as they want them.
(laughter)
(Andrew) Yeah, just--
(audience 3) Thank you, I think that's a valid point.
But the idea is to provide a repository of modules.
And then people can put their own front end on them
if they want to, in a local template.
If they don't want to, there should be a shared template
which they can use out of the box as it were.
But it's certainly meant to be configurable
and that is taken account into the proposal that Amir has drafted,
if you read that and indeed, if you read the discussion page,
that issue has already been addressed.
(Shani) Can I talk on to something?
Take the mic.
(Shani) Sorry, just to note that on Hebrew Wikipedia, for example,
the templates that we-- that the infoboxes that we use,
they are automatic and come from Wikidata.
But there's always an option for the community to edit that template
and adjust it to our specific needs.
- (Shani) So-- - No, the repository problem
is not about taking information about Wikidata.
It's like on the French Wikipedia, for dates, we will have
space between, I don't know, the day, then the month, then the year.
You don't want that order in English.
So when you pull a data from dates, you want it formatted in English
as you want it.
So the idea of the repository would be a generic LUA template
with dates where you can just put, "Hey, this is French,
so I want this formatting.
This is English, I want this."
So whatever infoboxes or other templates you are using with dates,
you can use the exact same infobox and have it correct in your language.
And that's a technical problem.
Can I suggest go to the Tool page, talk about it there?
Amir would love feedback on this, so please, do edit there.
So, yeah, a repository is a really great thing
for everyone working on Wikidata but it's really not Wikidata-centric,
the problem we are running with that idea.
Everyone here will love it.
But, yeah.
(Andrew) Any other questions. João, do you have a question?
(audience 12) Just a general question.
Well, sorry, more aimed at Mike, I have come across the problem
of wanting to use the infoboxes on species pages in WikiCommons.
a species category in WikiCommons.
And there are taxonomic minded people who really
do not like Wikidata going anywhere near
all their beautifully curated data which has no references
- Yeah. - in their category.
(audience 12) And I find it quite-- I personally can handle the fact
that the two pieces of data disagree, that's fine
because taxonomists disagree all the time about whether something
is even a species or not.
But the people who I have edited their category pages for
go off the deep end at me for doing it, so I've learned very quickly
to back off and not do it and only do it for my categories
that I'm creating and I'm very quick about creating my categories
before they get anywhere near them,
so that I can stick a Wikidata-sourced infobox on it.
And then they don't take it off because it's there first.
But they do still put their own data in there
- and references. - Yeah.
So taxons are the one exception on Commons at the moment
- to the Wikidata infobox deployment? - (audience 12) Yes.
It's probably because it's a Commons thing but anyway, if you go
to the Village pump/proposals, there was currently,
I submitted a proposal to add them to taxons.
So go comment on there, please.
- (audience 12) Okay. - (laughter)
It's currently being discussed.
(Andrew) We only have about five minutes left.
- So one--oh, two minutes left. - Yeah, I have an answer to Andy.
Andy?
What you proposed about...
a common base,
and a personalized presentation,
is the Basque solution.
They copy it all modeled and old templated.
And after that, they modify their templates.
So now, similar but they have their own copy.
Obviously, also it's time we made an upgrade.
I say we have a-- with relationship I send a message.
But I can send a copy...
to you?
But this is a [inaudible] of the implementator.
Make modifications or not.
(Andrew) One last question for the folks there.
How many people here know about Shape Expressions in Wikidata?
They're E numbers in Wikidata?
You got a quick slide up there.
But what do you folks predict as the relationship between
what you're doing with infoboxes and the rise of Shape Expressions
or ShEx in Wikidata?
There's a mic right there.
I would love to be able to define infoboxes with Shape Expression.
Because here you would write, basically my idea is that
you would write a Shape Expression, on the how data should look like
and then you annote-- maybe annoted them
with some labels if you want to customize let's say a field name.
And then it would be able to do multiple things.
First, generating infobox.
For example, the shape is-- here's an example of Shape Expression
for a personal infobox, you would just first say that
you have a sex and gender property
with some added values, some birth dates
and some, let's say it's a nationality and so on.
And then you could see it as a section of infobox on which you could give
a label in multiple languages.
So this way you are able to first generate an infobox.
Then you are able to validate the data.
If you want to do-- you could even do some fun stuff
like generating having some-- you know the project of Wikimedia Germany
of being able to edit Wikidata from Wikipedias.
(audience 14) Wikidata Bridge.
Wikidata Bridge, yes, I thank you.
So countries working on each field but if you have these kind of things
for infobox, you can do edit forms, that works on the field level,
but on the infobox level.
And you already know which has the possible values.
For example, for a property or could be able to say
that you might have multiple values for some but not for others
and so on.
And so you would have both displays, validations and editing
all in the same place.
And for the display part, it would be like for the Catalan state.
With four infoboxes, they are like ask the data.
So we have a Shape Expression, we could say,
"Hey, this is a human, I want this layout,
this is a location, I want this layout,"
without ever needing several infoboxes.
So it would be a way to make databox even prettier,
for a very small Wikipedia and everything.
So yeah, a big thing I'm enthusiastic about.
With four changes, I solve 50%.
Yes. (laughter)
I can't see how it integrates Shape Expressions into the Wikidata infobox
because it just uses-- it's one thing for everything.
Where this is breaking it down again into individual bits and pieces
and changing the amount of formatting for each individual area
which maybe it isn't so useful.
Very useful to gain data into Wikidata and saying this is what we want
in these entries.
But then the infoboxes can just display the whole lot
without having to go into this complex thing, I think.
I agree with Mike.
One of our goals, initial goals, was the harmonization.
You don't like my look and feel, you can make a proposal to change.
But everybody will have the same, a [inaudible] Wikipedia.
Because if not,
finally you can have four infoboxes for 50%,
you need 40 infoboxes for 50%.
So it's very dangerous.
(laughter)
No, no, I agree that maybe the [sign] doesn't like,
I change it.
But all the articles would be the same,
the same that we agree.
(Andrew) Great, well, thank you so much.
Let's have a hand for the [inaudible]
(applause)
Alright, and continue the conversation online, top page
or find them later on.
Thanks.