what is needed for Wikitree+ to update Wikidata?

Question

Help:Wikidata includes "WikiTree+ automatically uploads WikiTree data to Wikidata".

That page does not indicate what is needed in either WIkidata or Wikitree to trigger this upload, nor exactly which data is uploaded which could include

• WikiTree person ID (P2949)
• birth date
• birth place
• death date
• death place
• spouses and marriage dates
• parents and children (if notable)
• ...

I also can't find how often this updates (instantly, hourly, weekly, ...?)

The help page was last updated over 2 years ago, so presumably some people think it contains sufficient information. I am not one of those people - I want to know how to trigger the automatic uploads, or whether it's necessary to manually create the P2949 entry as recommended on Project: Notables - how to create step 4.3, and if so, what qualifiers should be used.

Comments

Good question, Scott. See also

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1604476/how-do-you-enter-wikitree-data-on-wikidata?show=1608641#c1608641

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Thanks Jim. Summary: "It doesn't work in a timely manner for some people who think they've done it right". So this question is aiming to clarify how to do it right, and how patient we need to be.

It was triggered by finding the profile for an Australian Olympian who competed under her married name. neither Wikidata nor en Wikipedia give her maiden name/LNABm despite Wikipedia giving her father's occupation.

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Thank you, Scott. I hope that Aleš will see this well tagged question and provide details of the automated mechanism and what needs to be done manually to facilitate it. Perhaps if the profile you mention is open you could link it for reference.

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The trigger profile was Gillian (England) Rolton AM (1956 - 2017) with Wikipedia article Gillian Rolton and Wikidata item Gillian Rolton (Q275533) which does not currently link to Wikitree nor contain her birth name (P1477).

Answer 1

Automated update of wikidata represents populating property https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P2949

I do that each week during the database dump data processing. What that process does:

• I take all links on profiles to wikipedia and get the pages wikidata item and in case the item is for a person, I check the data on both ends (Similar name, some dates do match, ...) and if I  (computer) decides they are close enough, I add the P2949 property to the wikidata page.
• I do the same for links to wikidata.org.
• I check the relatives of existing links and if the data match is good, I connect also the relatives. I do 2-3 iterations of that each week, so after a new person is connected, relatives are also connected and their relatives too.
• I also check the FindaGrave links on wikidata and if we have a profile linking to the same FG memorial and the data match is good, I also connect such profiles.

That is most of the automated things. It now ranges in several hundred new connections each week. You can examine my edit log on WikiData. https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Lesko987a&target=Lesko987a&offset=&limit=250

I did intend to populate wikidata with other things like dates, relatives,... but I can't decide to start doing that. I have a problem of maintaining the dates as they change on wikitree. Maybe some day.

There are many more details of how connections are done, but it would be much more writing about things you most likely don't need to know. But if there is an interest, I can explain some things into details.

Comments

Thank you Aleš.

So either (or both) of links to Wikipedia or Wikidata in the see also section, and wait a week (the Wikidata updates are Monday evening in my timezone), will get the reverse link established, and if they have notable relatives, they will also be connected on Wikidata.

Relatives tend not to always be connected on Wikidata from Wikipedia, so I think that is a useful thing to catch. A weekly update from Wikitree will never match the speed of birth/death dates from Wikipedia.Place names have a potential granularity problem so might not be practical to automatically compare.

I would be interested in more details, so I expect some others are too. It's up to you whether to insert it in the Help:Wikidata page, or add a new page and link it from the right section there and from Notables Project.

Thank  you.

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That is not all that I do. Each week I update all WikiData items that point to a redirected wikitree profile due to a merge or LNAB change. There is about 30 of them each week.

I also enter death dates and open the profiles on wikitree if the death date appears on wikidata. Those profiles are usually unlisted or private. That is one or two such profiles per month.

Then I add new connections as described above and reimport the wikidata. I repeat that twice.

At the end I also add the profile name to wikidata to all items that were entered manually by others.

As a result the WikiData suggestions are created. There could be many more suggestions that would improve WikiData but that is not our goal.

I can prepare a few reports to connect the profiles that are not connected automatically. 

• https://www.softdata.si/wt/WikiData/UnconnectedFather.htm
• https://www.softdata.si/wt/WikiData/UnconnectedMother.htm

On https://www.softdata.si/wt/WikiData/ there are some other reports about wikidata. 

• https://www.softdata.si/wt/WikiData/Wikipedia-Connected_0.htm lists connected profiles.
• https://www.softdata.si/wt/WikiData/Wikipedia-NoLink_0.htm lists profiles where wikipedia link wasn't established.
• https://www.softdata.si/wt/WikiData/Wikipedia-NoValidLink_0.htm lists profiles where wikipedia link isn't valid.
• https://www.softdata.si/wt/WikiData/Wikipedia-ValidLink_0.htm lists profiles where wikipedia link isn't to a person.
• https://www.softdata.si/wt/WikiData/Wikipedia-Person_0.htm lists profiles where there is a possible match between Wikipedia and wikidata if the person is actually the same. It wasn't automatically connected due to some data difference.

These reports are not updated each week, but they can be if someone will use them. I will update them today.

BTW: Here are some other pages about wikipedia/wikidata https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch7&Query=wikipedia+or+wikidata

Answer 2

The help page says " Nothing is automatically imported from Wikidata, but hints are displayed on suggestion reports so that members can investigate possible ways to add or improve WikiTree profiles"

And it says " WikiTree+ automatically uploads WikiTree data to Wikidata. This enables it to be seen and used creatively by other websites and independent developers. In addition to directly enabling more people to access our data this indirectly helps us gain a wider audience"

Scott I have no answer as to how or what needs to be done.

However Wikidata is highly unreliable and I have never found anything useful, just wild suggestions often taken from sources that are known to be unreliable.

As stated in a discussion on Wikipedia: "Wikidata's indiscriminate bot sourcing from Wikipedia, from other unreliable sources, and mass import-export with other databases gives false or unreliable information a false appearance of authority. It can become difficult or impossible to trace the origin of claims."

I thought that in the recent past, WikiData suggestions had been removed from automatically showing on suggestion lists.

I have not had Wikidata suggestions for a long time.

Comments

If data is automatically migrated from Wikitree to Wikidata, the system can include a reference back to Wikitree, which might have an original source. That’s our aim, but a lot of our data is lacking sources too.

if I manually create an entry on Wikidata, I probably won’t mark it sourced from Wikitree. I might mark the original source, but more likely just add to the unsourced bulk of probably accurate but difficult to verify data. Wikitree does no enable a direct link between a death date and its source, so that can’t be automated.

I have used wikidata to answer queries like “which notable people are buried at that cemetery?”. I have also used it to find notables managed by the Notables Project who could be transferred to the Australia Project. The more links there are between Wikitree Profiles and Wikidata Items (both ways), the more useful each resource will be to users of the other one.