Thank you all for coming here, I'm John Samuel and I'm going to present a talk on from open collaboration to customized control, transitioning from Wikipedia to Wikipedia.
Just to give a quick idea about what you can expect from this talk.
So basically, I want to focus on open collaboration and self-hosted data management.
So these are the two points that I want to focus on.
Then you can see some sort of flexibility and integration.
And the question that I want to ask in this talk is why Wikipedia's,
you may have heard about Wikipedia, if you haven't, I will give a small introduction.
So Wikipedia is something which is open, multilingual and collaborative.
And then there is Wikipedia, that's going to be useful for your specific data needs.
So this is what I'm going to talk about in this talk.
So just to give a quick presentation, I am...
Sorry.
Yeah.
I'm associate professor in C.P. Leo in France.
And I work on software design and big data.
That's my area of teaching.
And I'm an active contributor in Wikim data and Wikimedia comments.
Basically, I work a lot on knowledge representation and data analysis.
And I'm very much interested in integrating data from different sources.
And that's also my PhD thesis.
So what's Wikipedia?
I do not know how many of you know about Wikidata.
Wikidata is a sister project of Wikimedia, which was launched in 2012.
And it's a collaborative project which was aimed to create structure and link knowledge base.
So it basically is a free and open.
Then exactly like Wikipedia.
And then you have something that's very interesting that this is a linked and a structured knowledge base.
You can still have the collaborative aspects of Wikipedia.
And you can have you have something that's multi-lingual.
That's the best part of Wikidata.
So what's so special about Wikidata?
There are many advantages.
You can talk hard on this topic.
But what I really love about Wikidata is the evolution of Wikidata.
Sorry, evolution of the Wikimedia projects.
You have got a lot of Wikimedia sites for each and every language and on multiple sub domains.
And here in case of Wikidata, you have a single domain.
And you can get the data in all the languages.
So to give you more precise, I have taken certain examples.
Here, for example, this is a cat.
And you can see that in this example, you have cat in different languages.
You have an English cat.
You have in French, Shah, in Spanish, Gato, etc.
On the other side, on the right hand side, you can see there's one single number that is Q1 for this.
And that is going to be used to refer to cat.
Similarly, for example, example, the word example has been translated in different Wikipedia pages.
But on the other side, you have a single entry, and you can use this page.
Same for the place where I come live currently.
And you have multiple pages, but you have a single entry on the Wikidata side.
So let's take some simple examples.
If you have never heard about Wikidata, I want you to, if you are on Wikipedia,
you can test, go to Wikidia for us then.
And you see this page on Wikipedia.
Now you're wondering where I can find Wikidata.
So if you can see, carefully, this is quite weird.
On the right hand side, you have got a toolbar on that side.
And then you have some other options where you can see in other projects.
Wikidia comments, media, Wikidata, and there you are.
You have got the Wikidata item.
So when you click on the Wikidata item, you come to this page on Fosdem.
So you have a Fosdem entry.
Please be careful that from now onwards, we're not going to just talk about Fosdem.
We're also going to refer Fosdem from its identity fire, which is Q475430.
And we are going to talk about all these aspects of Fosdem from this particular point.
And I will talk about the structure data perspective.
Sorry, I have no clue.
Yeah, so why did we come up with Wikidata and what was already there?
So before Wikidata, people were actually putting lots of information on Wikidata.
So I'm going to keep on Wikipedia in form of info boxes.
And where you put essential information, like for example, you are a software.
You talk about the licenses, the logos, et cetera, on the official websites.
Or about if you are talking about human beings or actors, you have those information like data,
birth, location, statistics, et cetera.
So you have got lots of such information.
And sometimes you also have links on Wikidata, depending on the projects where you're working at.
And now what we can see on this side, I'm trying to show you three examples.
This is the English Wikipedia page.
Please check always the right hand side of my presentation.
You have got the info box with lots of information, general, the type of conference, the location, the concrete, et cetera.
Now I move on to the French Wikipedia.
You see the number of information is a bit reduced.
And you have done have all those information in their info box because the community has decided not to document all the information.
That's up to the community, the French language community.
And then now what I go now is to the Spanish Wikipedia.
And you see, again, they have got a bit surprised.
They have got lots of information on Wikidata, on false them, really, to the conference.
So it's community had decided lots of information.
It's good you have lots of information about these of the false conference and people can get a quick idea, just by looking at info box.
This is a very nice idea about info boxes.
So one thing about info boxes is very accessible.
You can create a uniform information for different topics like cities, human beings, actors, scientists, etc.
You can allow collaborative updates and you can also link them to Wikidata.
And that's really interesting.
But there is a simple problem.
This is something that I normally show to my students.
I have taken, this is a screenshot of my, one of my talks, one of my classes.
I explained to my students the problem related to having multiple information in the info boxes when it's not controlled easily.
You have got the population information and if you see carefully, not on different Wikipedia's.
Wikipedias, this information is not up to detail in Wikipedias information from 2009.
Whereas other Wikipedias have information.
I have the latest information, like for example, 2015.
So this is a major problem.
So you do people who are, you know, Italian speaking, do not get the latest information from Wikipedia.
And it's not a good idea.
So one way to think about this is let's take this information directly from Wikidata.
And feed it to the information.
But again, of course, it has to be decided by the community.
Every language community has to make a decision.
For example, French language community has accepted to integrate it to many, many of their Wikipedia pages.
But and Spanish and also many other Wikipedia communities.
But not all languages just to be frank.
So you, what, so you can one can say that, okay, this is good to have info boxes.
But you know that there are multiple info boxes.
You have the problem of redundant information, different languages.
And you cannot ensure an up to date information on all the Wikipedia.
So we have got an idea that this is really impressed, important.
So we have to have Wikidata, somehow which can be used to document lots of information.
And here what I'm talking about is this I'm coming back to first him.
I'm taking the exact examples.
So as you can see on Wikidata you have got different languages.
You have got the labels in different languages.
You have got the small description in different languages.
And also as well as the aliases.
So what happens is that once you have translated one particular item, you need not translate again and again and again.
You just have to say, give me the label of French, give me the French label for this particular item.
And you get the information.
This is really useful.
And then we can talk about the properties.
For example, are these things that can be used to describe our entity.
So you have got the data operation of first them.
You have got the local image.
You have got the images from the from the first them again on the same page.
So these are the properties.
These have been decided by the community.
Wikidata community and they identified these properties to describe first them.
And so I want to give this example.
I want to use this example throughout my presentation.
So what did the community decide?
The Wikidata community decided that for explaining conferences like first them.
And have used some sort of concepts.
For example, instance of it is like for example,
first them is an annual conference.
First them is a convention series.
First them is a recurring event.
And the date of creation, the location, the continent and the country.
This is what we want to describe and we want to use it.
But this is only English.
We want to do it in all the languages.
So there we go.
Now you have got the properties instead of saying instance.
So we're going to say it's p31 and we say it's whenever I say p31.
It means I have to talk I am talking about instance of.
And whenever I say p17, I'm talking about the country.
So that's the advantage.
So it's English label for the p70.
And now that's the label side.
Again for each and every aspect, we have got the labels.
Sorry, the identity fires for each concept.
Please note we will reuse this number.
Q 5 6 2 blah blah blah.
Later in the example.
And this is very useful because we can say that it's an annual conference.
This is a conference series and you have a label for an identity fire for all of these.
Please also note that there's piece of Stanford properties and Q for the normal items.
Now we have got this type of information on wiki data.
We can represent this information.
We can use the properties.
We can also use qualifiers.
For example, if you want to give additional information.
How precise is your date or how did you get this information?
Is it a census method?
You can add additional information.
And of course, just like Wikipedia, you can talk about or you have to add references.
So you can also add additional information about each and every aspect that has been mentioned on the previous slide.
So this is a very important example.
Finally, one thing that is very important is that an item on wiki data is just a loan.
We want to create a system where everything is linked with other databases.
So here what you can see if you are still on the wiki page of the first name.
You see additional identifier, for example, BabelNet, ID, freebase, ID, Instagram, username,
MasterDone, address, etc.
So all these is additional information.
And all these also links your data to other additional open databases.
And then you can, if you don't have all the information on wiki data, you can also use these data from other sources to create an integrated view of the particular entity.
Now, what this is not a new concept, this has been studied a lot in the context of linked open data.
People have been thinking about how we can use all this open databases and link them together so that whenever we want to do certain analysis,
we can use all these databases, get them from a relevant information and use it for a whenever needed.
So link the open data requires certain conditions.
First thing is that you need to have unique identifier.
So you have seen that in case of wiki data, you have those unique identifiers.
You have got the data in a form of principles, for example, stopject, predicate, and object, for example, when I said,
then, inception, February 20, 2001, etc.
So you have your straightforward, the triple way of information.
And finally, something, this cost-packed protocol, where you can use this protocol to query the data from these systems.
This is really important because we are ensuring the open landscape in the whole, whole data analysis.
So just to give you an idea, you will see, you see what happened in 2009.
Initially when LOD started, people started linking their database.
This is just the initial aspect.
And then suddenly, in 2010, people understood the importance of linking their databases together and have more data about a particular entity.
And so we have something like that in 2008, all those circles are databases, open databases.
And this is from 2024, you see the October 2024, you see there is an explosion of open databases, databases, and all of them decided to link each other.
And this is really interesting because you can get additional information.
One thing that I want to also talk about is the Sparkle Protocol.
For example, in this case, what we can see is that once you have represented your data, you can also query the data.
Like for example, give me all the annual conferences that's happening every year in the world.
This is a simple thing.
As I told you, please remember the number.
For Q5, 6 to it corresponds to annual conference and P31 corresponds to instance of.
Just by writing this on WIKI data, you can get all the annual conferences around the world, just by this simple land.
So this is a really interesting aspect of WIKI data.
So forget, now that's really about WIKI data, but why what's about WIKI base? Why do I talk about WIKI base?
So when you work with WIKI data, as you know that when you have your WIKI PD, you have got lots of community-based decisions,
not everything can be so easy to handle, for example, if you want to create new properties,
you want to add certain information, you cannot easily add them because the community decides what is relevant and what is not relevant,
what is notable, what is notable, etc.
So one thing that is what I want to focus about is what if I get all those things that are possible with WIKI data,
and I have this additional thing self-hosted instance.
That is that I have everything that I can do with WIKI data, but it's my own local instance,
and where I can do things like that, but I will have the complete control over my data.
So this is what I'm going to talk about when the WIKI base perspective.
One thing that you would like to do in case of such a work is that you need to have licenses that are correct to your institutions license,
or correct to your personal needs.
So license is important.
By default, the license of WIKI data is CC0.
It's like almost equivalent to the public domain, but with the license.
But maybe in real life, you cannot do that because of certain regulation by institutions,
you have some client's force to use CC by NC and SA, etc.
So you have to decide, so you have to make a compromise and you say,
okay, I will use CC by NC and I will use WIKI base.
I do not want to go in detail about the openness of these licenses,
but in the bottom you have the copyright and the top you have the CC0.
So let's go back to the same example.
If I want to say that I do not want to, if my own WIKI data,
I want to do something that is not possible and WIKI data.
I want to do something in my side.
So I said, let's remove convention cities.
I don't care.
I'll remove it because it's my day instance, my own database.
And then I want to add something called video.
And in this case, this video is linked to the force name website.
It's not a link to certain restrictions or proposed by the WIKI data company.
It's just my own links is on my database, so I want to do this.
So this is possible.
So what I want to show is that I want to give you a personal example.
In this case, I have written an article for example back in 2015.
It's an opinion article where I said, I need to think reading the command line.
And in that case, I created a database and I want to, it's not notable.
I cannot put it on WIKI data, but I want to create my own WIKI base.
And I created this page with all my own information.
Where I said, I want to talk about this page.
This is title, language of work, instance of creation, etc.
And all these are my own properties and all these are my own items.
They are not related to WIKI data.
And this is for example my core page.
And I want to include information, French and English.
For example, the title, the language of work, the nature of element, etc.
And it's the WIKI base, as you see, it's exactly like the WIKI data.
And now what I want to do is I want to also link it to WIKI data.
Because as I said, my goal ultimate goal is not to just be alone in my core,
but allow the open landscape where people who want to use my data can use it,
but also can see what is the equivalent property.
For example, P27, my WIKI base instance is the same as P1476 in the WIKI data community.
And same for other things you can create equivalent properties, etc.
And what's the advantage?
So you can get all the properties with this example.
So what's the advantage with this?
So I can say, give me all my courses sorted by Academy here.
This is my personal information.
And it's just coming from my own WIKI base cloud.
It's nothing from the WIKI data.
This is my own information.
But at the same time, I can also say, I want to link my data to WIKI data.
For example, oops.
And I also get information from WIKI data.
For example, I'm trying to get all the translation,
all the information related to official website from WIKI data.
And this is my WIKI base, and I'm also getting data from WIKI data on my side.
So trying to be integrating more and more data from open databases.
If you want to feel interested, you can try WIKI base.cloud.
This is something that I use for my personal lead.
If you are really WIKI enough, you can use the Docker images of WIKI base.
If you want to do it on your own side, it's also possible.
There are so many people who have used these things.
Like, there are already 744 open databases.
And what I wanted to talk about in this talk is that you can use WIKI base for personal or institutional.
Especially if you are in the glam field or in the museum, especially museums.
You do not cannot put everything on open with open licenses.
Or if you are in working with the personal data, you can use your own WIKI base.
So these are some of the online resources.
And thank you.
Thank you very much.
Any questions? Any questions?
No? Okay. Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
There is. Sorry.
I was wondering that it may be more related to WIKI data.
What the condition to make new data in WIKI data?
Because I know on WIKI, you cannot just open a page for any subject.
There are similar restrictions.
Yeah.
The main problem in opening up is like you have to be very careful about the license.
If your data is not with the CCS by CCS0 license,
it's not possible to include it in the WIKI data system.
So that is why we need something like WIKI base,
because you can still integrate with WIKI data,
but we need to create something that I demonstrated here.
But you cannot put that on WIKI data.
So one thing that's important is the license and then also the community agreement.
Not everything can be put up on WIKI data,
because of notability reasons,
because you cannot say that this and particular information
is really notable enough to be put on WIKI data.
So these are very delicate questions.
People, mostly what people do is they try to put this information in WIKI base
and show it to the world that this is really advantages.
And then if the license is CCS0,
you can just import it to the WIKI data.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.