WeRelate talk:Wikipedia Biography Inclusion Project

Question: How to include wikipedia bio when the person page on WR already exists? [8 January 2012]

I recently added Garrison Keillor's person page, and I can't figure out how to automatically include the WP biographical information, tried to imitate the Bill Clinton page, but it didn't work. Suggestions?--Poliwop 13:14, 8 January 2012 (EST)

The Help:Guidelines for use of Wikipedia are pretty complete on this.

On the body of the source page, put {{source-wikipedia|Garrison Keillor}}. Once a week a process runs that will replace that with two different template references. One that is created to contain annually (or so) updated content from WP, the other a copyright notice. To see examples pending substitution, go to Template:Source-wikipedia and click on "What links here". Any of the listed Person pages are ready for substitution. Be aware, not all such pages are substituted when the weekly job runs. The database used for substitution is not the active content on wikipedia, but a snap shot that is taken a few times a year. So pages that are relatively new to wikipedia may not get substituted for some months.

Another step to consider, is whether to also add the WP page as a source. Some genealogical purists do not accept wikipedia as a source, since - by definition - WP pages are not supposed to contain original material. I take a more inclusive view of all reference materials that might serve as sources - and always take the second step to include WP as a source too - generally attaching it to the D.O.B. and (if present) D.O.D. (unless something better is available). Adding WP as a source in no way prevents pure genealogical material like birth certificates being later added to support the other content. I believe in adding the WP page as a source even if it isn't tagged to support of a particular genealogical fact.

Finally, if you want to see how something is done, you can always open the page for editing to see an example - just cancel the edit without making any changes. Let me know if you still have questions... --jrm03063 16:50, 8 January 2012 (EST)

including werelate links on wikipedia [11 August 2013]

Have you looked into this at all? I have had some brief discussions here which were interesting. AndrewRT 17:38, 19 May 2012 (EDT)

I see the discussion - and I think there are several counter-argument(s).

* WeRelate is no more or less reliable than a lot of genealogical sites that underpin existing Wikipedia biography. For example, "the peerage" is not a public wiki but it is regularly used as a source on wikipedia (indeed, I regularly report duplication defects to the site owner).

* Why do WP biographical pages often indicate notable descendants many generations removed? Who, other than a genealogist, really cares? Obviously, part of the rationale is to justify any given WP page by interconnecting it to the greatest possible extent - but such content should be removed if WP really doesn't accept a genealogical mission.

* If genealogy is really not part of the mission on wikipedia - why the extensive variety of ahnentafel templates on wikipedia? (really, look them up and see how many pages use those templates). If nothing else - werelate provides a better way to present and access that information. Rejecting the werelate presentation then - while embracing the limited Wikipedia alternatives - is, at best, arbitrary and at worst - a sort of wikipedia syncophancy. Precisely NOT what is sought in open source knowledge efforts.

Honestly, I think the right approach may ultimately be to have a bot that goes out and creates the WeRelate external links on the WP pages (or perhaps maintains them). We have something like 19,500 pages that hook to WP biography pages - resting within an overall base of 2 Million individuals. I figure that WP ultimately has to embrace something like WR as a genealogical bag on the side. Rejecting genealogy yet allowing a variety of excuses for pure genealogical content creates too many situations where decisions are apt to be - or at least seem - arbitrary. That doesn't serve WP at all. WR external links seem like a good way to start down a more clearly defined road for WP.

Now that I think of it - we might be better served if there's a way to do a link to a person page that automatically opens it with the family tree open. --jrm03063 12:51, 20 May 2012 (EDT)

I think a better approach would be to leverage DBpedia (http://www.dbpedia.org) and make WeRelate content available for linked-data exploration. I am returning to some low-level of activity on this site after a long hiatus and I do need to review developments (if any) over the past couple of years in this direction.--ceyockey 20:04, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

I know only a little about DBpedia but that sounds like an excellent idea. How do we do this and how can we assess impact? AndrewRT 06:22, 6 October 2012 (EDT)

I'll investigate how to do this. I am working on the construction of a semantic framework environment at my workplace and looking into this for WeRelate will be an interesting correlate to that work activity. --ceyockey 20:54, 6 October 2012 (EDT)

This seems interesting, and almost certainly should be done. Between the 70K place pages and 20K person pages that come from WP - we have a lot of back-links of potential interest.

OK, so I have done 100% of nothing on this since I posted 10 months ago. However, I've not forgotten the matter. I need to do some research on whether semantic solutions have been pursued in the genealogical space beyond something like dbpedia. One thing to consider is whether the GEDCOM standard has been ported to OWL so that GEDCOM-RDF can be produced. There is an opportunity as well for identifying each individual person by a PURL; goodness, if we could get a PURL which is referenced by ancestry.com, werelate.org and find-a-grave (let's leave out "notable" people for the moment by Wikipedia's standards), that would be an incredible thing. --ceyockey 19:35, 7 August 2013 (EDT)

PURL sounds like a very exciting idea - could be a fantastic advance in genealogy if this could be achieved. However, given that there are ca 14,000,000,000 people who have been born since 1650 who are no longer alive and WeRelate only has details of 2,500,000 of them (0.02% coverage), I'm not sure here is the place to start. Please see User:AndrewRT/Size for more info. AndrewRT 20:23, 10 August 2013 (EDT)

Surname articles, source articles and place articles found on Wikipedia [4 October 2012]

I was keen during my active period here a while back to provide some content draws from Wikipedia in relation to surnames and sources (such as some newspapers), as well as some places (such as cemeteries with articles). I think that the scope of 'wikipedia inclusion' goes far beyond biographies, and I would suggest that if the focus of this Project remains biographies (which I do suggest it should), then I would recommend revising the name to something like "Wikipedia Biography Inclusion Project".--ceyockey 20:09, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

About werelate sources and wikipedia sources [4 October 2012]

Some might have noticed a primitive effort of mine to provide a correlation between sources we have included in werelate and sources used as references in wikipedia articles (for instance, see Surname:Singh as a random pull from my contributions list). I am curious about what people think about maintaining some level of relationship or cross-representation between sources in werelate and sources in wikipedia for content brought over from the latter. My motivation for pursuing the correlation was two-fold: first, as a source density evaluation task (do we have sources here which would support content found in Wikipedia?); second, as a matter of keeping to the general principle that content here should be sourced and thinking that simply relying upon the assumption that Wikipedia content was properly sourced wasn't necessarily sufficient. I think that this is largely a non-issue for biographical articles where wikipedia content is drawn over into werelate; Wikipedia's biography sourcing policy is explicit, stringent and enforced. Other types of content draw which I am interested in, though, such as surname articles and place articles, are not as stringently enforced, despite being well defined. Thanks for your thoughts.--ceyockey 20:19, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

A better example article is probably Surname:Wright instead of Surname:Singh.--ceyockey 20:22, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

New template to potentially assist finding people to add [7 October 2012]

I've created Template:wpsurnamelist as a way to add a note to a surname page that a wikipedia article exists for the surname, while also indicating that page only consists of a list of biography links to other wikipedia articles. Most surname "articles" in wikipedia conform to the list-format rather than having surname origin and historical relevance information. My thinking is that this template will help to both like WeRelate to Wikipedia and accelerate the introduction into WeRelate of people-entries for those who have articles in Wikipedia.--ceyockey 22:19, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Feel free to edit the project page with this information! You are quite right that there are great WP pages for surnames, places, and other things that are apt to be useful (I just added "Coffin" in the last couple days). I'm definitely on the lookout for place pages related to cemeteries, and have added a number of those over the years. --jrm03063 09:10, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

I've added a subsection under "current practice" which describes several templates of direct interest to this project ... including the one I've created recently. --ceyockey 20:52, 6 October 2012 (EDT)

Thanks - very useful! AndrewRT 13:16, 7 October 2012 (EDT)