User talk:Lea Lacroix (WMDE)

Hello Lea. I write to you as I see that you have a significant part in the project Wikidata Bridge. I do not now in what discussion page in the project to put these questions, so I write to you directly.

I contribute on Wikipedia in Norwegian and have done so for more than 12 years. My interest lays in writing articles and not so much I am afraid, in using Wikidata.

I am visiting your users page to ask you whether Wikidatas total interface is part of the scope of Wikidata Bridge. Or is this only project on making a bridge between Wikipedia and Wikidata. Please let me explain why I put the question to you.

The implementation of Wikidata in infoboxes is at present a hot, not to say exhausting theme in Tinget and Torget at wpno. There is an ongoing ballot if the references should be totally removed from the information boxes. You might be able to read the discussions by using a translation programme, but do not try to read it all. Life is not long enough.

There are of course as many nuances in discussions as participants. However, in my judgement a very important reason for rejecting WD is the users feeling of loosing control. Those who are familiar with Wikidata, does not feel that control is lost, but if WD is strange to you, that feeling might occur.  You have of course heard that before.

To explain my position, I write in Visual Editor as much as I can. I have not posted very many pictures in commons, but I did more of that after a significant change in the interface took place.  The interface in Wikidata strikes me as difficult to understand.

Even the discussions contain a lot of P’s and Q’s technical words that is never used in the same way in ordinary articles! The pages have names that I am not used to in plain Norwegian. The choosing of words favours a technical language, perhaps that of the computer science. I am not quite sure, I am a lawyer myself, and we have occasionally problems using a simple language too!  

In the actual case we have a problem that the references from the boxes occurs like a url-line. Without a text in ordinary language the reader cannot understand by just reading what the source is. But even when it occurs together with ordinary words, it is ugly!

Wikipedias lack of diplomacy shows itself in all its ugliness in the discussion, as you might imagine. Some users feel that their work in establishing Wikidata and connecting it with Wikipedia is threatened, others and to some extent myself, feel estranged, alienated.

Well, all this to explain the reasons for my simple question about the scope of your project. But perhaps also to report a concern of a long-lasting conflict between the WD’s and the WP’s in the future. It might be possible to overcome with a simpler interface in WD.

Thank you and have a nice day.

Hello! Thanks for your message. I'll try to answer to each point separately, let me know if I forgot something important.

• You can find here the documentation of the Wikidata Bridge, including what it does and what it doesn't do. The talk page is the best place to ask questions.
• The Wikidata Bridge is a feature for Wikipedia: it will allow Wikipedia editors to be able to edit data from Wikidata directly from the infoboxes. We hope that this tool will help Wikipedia editors to regain a feeling of control on the data that they use in Wikidata, and be more keen to use Wikidata's data in infoboxes.
• The Wikidata Bridge does not provide any change on the interface of Wikidata.
• The reason for choosing unique identifiers on Wikidata (Q and P numbers) was made both to avoid highlighting a language more than an other, as Wikidata is an international project, and to allow external website to use these unique and stable identifiers (the URL will never change, even if the labels are renamed) to connect with Wikidata.
• If I understand correctly, you encounter an issue with infoboxes on nowp displaying only the URL of the reference. I guess in some cases, this can be fixed by updating the code of the infobox to get more information from Wikidata, like the name of the book/newspaper/website where the reference comes from. Sometimes the information is not in Wikidata yet, but could be added there :)

Thanks for sharing your concerns. I hope my reply could help a bit. Cheers, Léa

Thank you very much for your answer. Please let me briefly comment on two of them.

I am concerned by the infoboxes presenting URL in the references in general. The reference can be ajusted in WD by adding text in the code. But in my view the URL should be removed totally. The URL does not give the reader any valuable information, but disturbes the reading. Don't take me to serious, but we will get used to it, like we will get used to garbage in the streets, when it is enough of it. In nowp it seems like there is no one that are capable in finding the error.

Hopefully the project will make it easier to edit Wikidata directely from the infoboxes. However, well inside the WD you will meet a different culture of editing. The users occupied with writing text in articles would like to ajust the information from Wikidata to the box. This is met with rejection from Wikidata. An example: Beethoven had according to WD as an occupation (P106) (starting to learn) as virtuoso (Q214970). Nobody never had such an occupation. He was a virtuoso, but was never hired as one. The caraterisation virtuoso discribes his skills. A correction in Wikidata however, is not accepted. Wikidata shall, it is said, serve all languages and not only Norwegian. If not a logic answer, I suppose that is true in a sense. The information could be corrected manually in the infoboks, if you what to do the work, but then this is not what you where there for.

The vote that now are taking place in nowp is directely about showing references in the infoboxes, but in my opinion the underlaying question is about the connection between Wikidata and Wikipedia, in general. It is a struggle between those who wants to "enlighten" the public speaking Norwegian by writing articles and those who see Wikidata as a kee to something bigger. Those who will connect with Wikidata will win this vote, but with a large minority. I am concerned by the confrontive tone between the parties, mostly upheld by a single user.

I am not hostile to Wikidata. Wikidata can't be changed only to serve nowp. It would however help if the references looked "normal" even coming from Wikidata. I am not expecting your answer to this. However, from what I can see there is not sufficient competence in nowp to solve this problem. If you therefore, as an expert, could have this in your thoughts and if not solving it yourself, pass it on to someone that could look into it, or even give me his or hers adress, I would be greateful. Thank you for your time!

Hi - you moderated a women-only event yesterday at the online hackathon. It may have had only two participants; or maybe it didn't even happen, I don't know. But I just want to note that I'm uncomfortable with the idea of official events that exclude anyone. I'm also curious - do you think such a gathering violates the Code of Conduct?

Hello,

The event took place yesterday with 10 participants, and it was a nice gathering where everyone was extremely helpful, benevolent and supportive. I believe that such non-mixed gatherings can help people from minority groups to feel welcome, supported, especially during tech events where cis-men represent a huge majority.

I'm not the only one thinking so: you can find a lot of documentation online explaining why non-mixed events are useful and important in tech events. You will of course also find articles that disagree. That's an interesting topic to discuss anyways, but I'd rather do it IRL in front of a cup of tea rather than on a written form :)

As for the meetup yesterday during the remote Wikimedia Hackathon 2020, I believe that it was a great moment, it didn't private anyone from anything (men could still hack on any projects they wanted, attend to plenty of other meetups, participate in all discussions), it just created a supportive space for a minority group who may feel intimidated by this very male crowd.

Thanks for clarifying your opinion, and that this event did indeed happen. So, do you think it violated the Code of Conduct? That particular part of the Code of Conduct is written somewhat poorly, so it's hard to say for sure, but I'm curious what your opinion is.

No, I don't think it violated any part of the Code of Conduct.

Okay, thanks.

Hi! Could you mark Template:Wikidata Bridge/Header/text for translation? The previous state was less-than-ideal with the single English subpage and without Translate support, so I added translate tags (and switched to using TemplateStyles, while fixing some bugs like black Overview tab on translated versions of Wikidata Bridge and tabs floating out of colored background; also made the template more or less responsive). By the way, I would appreciate SVG icons instead of PNG ones, as they are scalable, while the current ones look bad if I zoom in. Thanks in advance!

Hello, and thanks a lot for helping improving the template and the translation process! I think it has been done now. Let me know if anything else is needed from me.

About the svg icons, you're right, I'll upload them when I have a bit more time.

Thanks for your feedback!

Hi! Why did you change the motto’s fallback font family to sans-serif? According to MDN, cursive is the most similar generic font family to URW Chancery L: the result looks more like handwritten pen or brush writing than printed letterwork—this is exactly what I see using URW Chancery L.

Hi! I did it because I realized that on many computers, it's displayed in Comic Sans, and that's not something I want :D If you have any idea of another way I can suggest font fallback without ending up in Comic Sans, feel free to improve it.

Hey! Not sure if anyone from my team has hit you already with this proposal, but... how about a blogpost about this project? https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Space/Editorial_guidelines#Getting_your_news_published Thanks for considering!

Hey hey :) Thanks for the offer, but I think it's a bit too early for that. We're at the beginning of the project, we don't have much story to tell - I'm pretty sure that in six months, when we will have published the first version and tested it with the communities, I'll have more to tell :)

Well, FWIW, it doesn't have to be about the Bridge. If you/WMDE have any story you'd like to share, by all means, hit us soon! Wish you a great rest of your week.

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As I couldn't find anything about the change on Commons, Meta or the tech lists, I am now wondering if my reply here is incorrect :)

Technical barnstar

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