Wikidata: Attempting to bridge FOSS ideals and direct democracy

Multiple other projects also use the vast linked data store that underpins ubiquitous internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and some of them are helping the fight for democracy. Wikipedia is big, but even so, it's bigger than it looks. For a start, the encyclopedia itself is larger than it appears: there are active Wikipedias in …

[Pascal Monett]

Human interaction is complex

The Internet itself is certainly a Good Thing^TM. Social media can also be a good thing, but the bitter truth is that humans are, as always, the weakest link.

Technology, as impressive as it may be, will never be the solution. Between arrogant billionnaires who believe that their opinion is more important because their bank account is larger, and the assholes who have the technical means to impose their will on others and do not hesitate to do so (yes, the overlap is rather large here), there is only one solution :

Education. Teaching people to think for themselves. To pit their ideas against historical fact, and deduce on their own whether or not their opinion is right.

The exact thing our governments are currently dead-set against, because that would mean that manipulating opinion is harder, which would be an impediment to their goals - goals which rarely align with the goals of the basic human population, which is mainly to live in peace, live a full life with a loving family and die knowing that you have loved and been loved, and have avoided starvation, death and strife for your family and your loved ones.

Some people just love to watch the world burn.

I don't see how technology, much less pseudo-AI, is going to help here.

[Doctor Syntax]

"this vulture has seen more dinsinformation from anti-vaxxers than in the year so far"

Liam, just tell them that antivax is a Deep State conspiracy to eliminate the more gullible from the gene pool - it's too late to deal with parents but by getting them not to vaccinate the F1 generation there's a good chance of their not being an F2. Tell them the MMR rumour was particularly clever because be concentrating on the first M, measles it totally distracted from the second M, mumps. If their sons catch that by not being vaccinated they'll be firing blanks - no grandchildren to look forward to.

It should chime with their way of thinking. If it gets seeded well enough it could spread to eat the anti-vax conspiracy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Misinformation

That's misinformation. There is substantial evidence of a lot of harm from vaccines and before anyone says it I am not "antivax", I've had plenty, I would have had less, had I known earlier. You should not blindly take any medicine there are huge profits behind them. Evidence does emerge of the damage done by a lot of medicines and it is ruthlessly suppressed by and large, but if you keep your eyes open you can see evidence pass by before it's killed off. There is a reason Pharma spend huge amounts on TV advertising in the US and medical journals, and in supposedly regulatory organisations across the world including UK. Gates and China are now the largest investors in the WHO. Both get significant returns on that. Universities take research grants. They don't get the money for saying lucrative medicines are dangerous. This goes all the way back to WW1 and Rockefeller.

If you believe me wrong, ok go get your shots blindly and good luck with that. Although soon they will aerosolize them so we dont get a choice. If anyone medication without consent is good, I wonder if you think that when the assisted dying bill comes for you?

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Misinformation

Correction - there is some evidence of some harm from vaccines.

No-one I have heard/read from the medical world claims there are no risks from vaccines, but aside from sanitation and a general improvement of living standards, vaccines have done more for health than any other measure in the history of mankind.

Of course, there are many who won't let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

Take the MMR scare for example. AIUI that's been debunked quite comprehensively by multiple studies - certainly more than you could put down to academics having been "got to". If you think the number of people needed to be involved could all be part of some big cover up - without that leaking out - then I have a bridge you might be interested in buying.

Then there's the Covid scares - particularly the AstraZenica one and claims of it causing blood clots. If you don't care about facts, it's easy to say "X had the vaccine, X had a blood clot, therefore the vaccine caused the blood clot". The reality is, some people get blood clots. If (literally) many millions of people have a vaccine, then some of them will get a blood clot - but it's not been caused by the vaccine, it would have happened anyway. Just like some people will have had the vaccine, and the bus crashed on the way home - but it's hard to say there's any way for someone having had a vaccine to cause the bus they are travelling in to crash !

Finally, I'm all up to date with my vaccinations. I've seen what some of the illnesses can do, so while there is a small risk in vaccination, I'll take that over the much higher and more serious risk from the illnesses vaccinated against.

[graeme leggett]

One problem with wikidata

If you have multiple wikipedia projects taking information from wikidata* and you edit wikidata then all those projects are updated simultaneously - whether the data is correct or not. So you could potentially put bad data across several languages versions of a topic.

And it wont show up as a edit if an editor has their own language page on their watchlist so it could go unnoticed for a while.

*a lot of wikidata has just been imported from wikipedias (generally the English language one) in the first place

[rg287]

Re: One problem with wikidata

That's not really a "problem" with wikidata since that's what it's designed to do. It's a "problem" in the same way anyone can edit wikipedia is a problem.

It's an architectural choice which trades a vulnerability for abuse against significantly reduced workload for editors.

Wkidata was originally conceived to link articles for the same topic on different language wikipedias (which may/will have different article titles, either due to language or due to cultural differences).

Wikidata then grew to cover objective data like dates and numbers. The articles for the Vietnam War on en.wp and vi.wp are somewhat different and not simple translations, but certain key values like dates and belligerents can be listed objectively.

It is quite handy for things like official websites for people/orgs/events, which can be changed in one place and updated universally.

One advantage is that vandalism is reflected across so many projects that someone will probably spot it quite quickly (although it won't be in the wikipedia article's changelog). This contrasts with someone making quiet edits to a smaller langugae wikipedia with fewer editors, with the hope that they can confuse local search crawlers or users, even though such an edit would be reverted quickly on en.wp or fr.wp.

Additionally, there's probably at least a couple of editors somewhere in the world who have the wikidata page on their watchlist and will see the update, so they can revert it just as easily as if it had been directly on a wikipedia article. As a general rule, if I add a WP page to my watchlist, I add the wikidata object too.

[Pigsonthewing]

Re: One problem with wikidata

"Wkidata was originally conceived to link articles for the same topic on different language wikipedias (which may/will have different article titles, either due to language or due to cultural differences)."

No; that was the first part of its rollout, but it was always intended to do much more than that.

[Maurice Mynah]

Aletheia

The well read forum denizen may have recognised the word from the Alethiometer in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Aletheia

> The well read forum denizen may have recognised the word from the Alethiometer in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

To quote the great T H Huxley:

"How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that!"

[Arthur the cat]

the excellent and much-missed satirical email newsletter NeedToKnow

Essential Friday reading back in the day.

[keithpeter]

WikiFlix

Very nice.

Plan 9 From Outer Space, Metropolis, Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Dracula, The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Relevant viewing for modern times (alas, not itself apparent).

Icon: Wish them well.

[Andrew Scott]

Re: WikiFlix

M.

[MarkMLl]

Cat out of bag...

"Multiple other projects also use the vast linked data store that underpins ubiquitous internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and some of them are helping the fight for democracy."

So considering that El Reg reports that the US executive has its sights on people who don't agree with it in the Library of Congress and Copyright office, one has to ask: what jurisdiction does the Wikimedia Foundation operate under, and to what extent could the US government^H^H administration^H^H no let's be honest here TRUMP screw it around now that its underlying agenda has been highlighted?

[Taliesinawen]

Re: Cat out of bag...

> .. no let's be honest here TRUMP screw it around now that its underlying agenda has been highlighted?

What is this underlying agenda to which you refer?

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Cat out of bag...

That would be the one where it looks a lot like he's been on a mission to fire anyone who might say no to whatever he comes up with next. My opinion is that Trump is the sort of guy who surrounds himself with yes men and sycophants - if you might (for example) point out that his next bright idea could be illegal, he doesn't want to know.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Cat out of bag...

> what jurisdiction does the Wikimedia Foundation operate under

Wikidata is in Germany, they tell me.

[Colin Bain]

Wikiflix Anonymous

The link to Wikiflix returns a black screen.

This gets you there https://wikiflix.toolforge.org/

[Andrew Scott]

Re: Wikiflix Anonymous

https://wikiflix.toolforge.org/#/ gets me there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust

You can't trust Wikipedia anymore, even the founders say so. Why can we trust the data?