6 Wikimedia Commons

Sunoikisis Digital Classics, Fall 2020

Session 6. Research with Wikimedia Commons

Thursday Nov 12, 16:00 UK = 17:00 CET

Convenors: Monica Berti (Universität Leipzig), Gabriel Bodard (University of London), Richard Nevell (Wikimedia UK)

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/pyGdfmWPy_Y

Slides: tba

Session outline

This session will introduce the Wikimedia family of projects and tools, including Wikipedia, the Commons, Wikidata and Wikisource, and the connections between them that provide both data and research materials. We shall talk both about the value of these massive, accessible and open resources, and about some of the biases within the collection and authoring of data. We shall then discuss some examples of research projects using Wikimedia resources, either as raw data, as a toolset, or as the subject of research in its own right, with a particular interest in the use of Linked Open Data to connect between WM projects and other resources in the digital classics and digital humanities spheres.

Seminar readings

(For discussion in this forum thread)

• Regine Heberlein (2019). "On the Flipside: Wikidata for Cultural Heritage Metadata through the Example of Numismatic Description." IFLA WLIC 2019 - Athens, Greece - Libraries: dialogue for change in Session 206 - Art Libraries with Subject Analysis and Access. Available: http://library.ifla.org/id/eprint/2492
• Sara Perry & Nicole Beale (2015). "The Social Web and Archaeology’s Restructuring: Impact, Exploitation, Disciplinary Change." Open Archaeology 1.1. Available: https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2015-0009

Further reading

• AHRC (2019). “Towards a National Collection: Opening UK Heritage to the World.” Available: https://ahrc.ukri.org/research/fundedthemesandprogrammes/tanc-opening-uk-heritage-to-the-world/
• Anon (2016). "Gender by Language" Wikidata Human Gender Indicators. Available: http://whgi.wmflabs.org/gender-by-language.html
• Tilmar Bayer (2015). "How many women edit Wikipedia?" Wikimedia Foundation Blog. Available: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/04/30/how-many-women-edit-wikipedia
• Bosse, A. (2019). "Standards: Dimensions of Data: Place." In edd. Hotson & Wallnig, Reassembling the Republic of Letters in the Digital Age. Göttingen University Press. Pp. 79–96. Available: https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2019-1146 [Discusses aligning gazetteer to Wikidata]
• H. Cayless (2019). "Sustaining Linked Ancient World Data." Digital Classical Philology. Ancient Greek and Latin in the Digital Revolution. Edited by Monica Berti. Age of Access? Grundfragen der Informationsgesellschaft 10. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 35-50. Available: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110599572-004
• Dunn, S. And Hedges, M. (2013). "Crowd-sourcing as a Component of Humanities Research Infrastructures." International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 7.1, 147-169. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/ijhac.2013.0086
• Lori Jones & Richard Nevell (2016). "Plagued by Doubt and Viral Misinformation: The Need for Evidence-based Use of Historical Disease Images." The Lancet Infectious Diseases 16(10), pp. e235–e240. Available: http://hdl.handle.net/10871/27873
• Leonard, Victora (2019). "How can historians achieve inclusivity in digital archives?" Historical Transactions 2019-12-16. Available: https://blog.royalhistsoc.org/2019/12/16/how-can-historians-achieve-inclusivity-in-digital-archives/
• Martin L. Poulter (2017). "Probing Parliament(s) with Wikidata." Wiki Playtime 2017-02-07. Available: https://medium.com/wiki-playtime/probing-parliament-s-with-wikidata-8cdb54e5221b
• Neil Thompson & Douglas Hanley (2018). "Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence From a Randomized Control Trial." MIT Sloan Research Paper No. 5238-17. (abstract)
• Pietro Maria Liuzzo, Andrea Zanni etal. (2014), "The EAGLE Mediawiki." In Information Technologies for Epigraphy and Cultural Heritage Proceedings of the First EAGLE International Conference (edd. Orlandi, Santucci, et al.). La Sapienza Università Editrice. Pp. 187–201. Available: https://www.eagle-network.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Paris-Conference-Proceedings.pdf
• Claudio Ruiz & Scann (2019). "Reproductions of Public Domain Works Should Remain in the Public Domain." Creative Commons. Available: https://creativecommons.org/2019/11/20/reproductions-of-public-domain-works/
• Valeria Vitale & Gabriel Bodard (2017). “Cross-cultural After-Life of Classical Sites.” Talking Humanities. Available: https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2017/10/19/cross-cultural-after-life-of-classical-sites/

Useful resources

• Ten simple rules for editing Wikipedia
• Wikipedia Training Modules
• Tools and editing guides from the WCC

Exercise

1. Pick a page on Wikipedia on a topic of academic interest to you, which needs significant improvement, and agree with your fellow-students to “adopt” this page. Consider ways of capitalising on Wikipedia's role as a hub for information: summarise recent work, including links to external resources, and include details of historiography if you can.
   • For short articles that you may improve, you can browse the many “stub” categories in Wikipedia. For example there are many stub pages under Greek mythology, Ancient Roman People, Archaeology, Classical Studies. The most recently created pages in WCC are also likely to need improvement.
2. If you feel more ambitious or confident, you may also try creating a new Wikipedia page of your own (although you'll have to be careful to reduce the risk of it being rapidly deleted by overzealous WP editors).
   • If you wish to create a new page you could start by looking at one of the lists of ‘red links’ which identify pages which need creating. The #WCCWiki project has a list of pages to create/expand here. There are also lists of Wikipedia red links by topic; those which may be of interest include archaeology, literature and philosophy.
3. Add the page you have edited or adopted to your watchlist by clicking on the ‘Watchlist’ link at the top of the page. You will then receive notifications when someone makes a change to the page. Over the next few weeks observe the changes which are made to the page (remember to take a look at the ‘Talk’ page as well as the main content, as this is where editors will post notes about issues) and be prepared to discuss these with your colleagues. You can get a clear idea of exactly what changes have been made by clicking the ‘View history’ tab for your page, and then comparing selected revisions.
4. Watch the pages adopted or edited by your colleagues as well, and be prepared to make further improvements, comment on the Talk page, and help to resolve any conflicts that arise.

• If you have any questions about or problems with this exercise, you may ask for help in this forum thread