Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Mereology Task Force (ID: 23651753)/Final Report
Application type: Standard application
Part 1: Project and impact
1. Describe the implemented activities and results achieved. Additionally, share which approaches were most effective in supporting you to achieve the results. (required)
We formed a Task Force that was active or semi-active at different times. We managed to fix some structural problems in Wikidata, but more importantly, we had a lot of very fruitful discussions. (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Ontology/Mereology_Task_Force/Online_Meetings)
Many of our approaches proved to be subpar in comparison to our other approaches, and decreased our success in this project. If anything, we got a great toolkit on what not to do. I don't consider this a failure, in the sense that we genuinely didn't know what would work and what wouldn't at this point.
We have seen that a "Task Force" doesn't get nearly as much attention as something like a Course, even when we focused more of our time on this task force at certain periods, the Course applications were much more broadly disseminated. It is my opinion now that, a Task Force to fix a certain aspect of Wikidata, will generally not get as much attention as a Wikiproject would.
The weekly meetings, a generic method by all means, proved to be successful in deepening our conversation with some people. But it didn't really help with retention, and we lost a lot of interested members in time.
One unexpected thing was that, I got to experience working with AI tools to fix Wikidata (in a non-sloppy way), and this did get some interest at times, and has changed my workflow for the better, quite significantly.
2. Documentation of your impact. Please use space below to share links that help tell your story, impact, and evaluation. (required)
Share links to:
- Project page on Meta-Wiki or any other Wikimedia project
- Dashboards and tools that you used to track contributions
- Some photos or videos from your event. Remember to share access.
You can also share links to:
- Important social media posts
- Surveys and their results
- Infographics and sound files
- Examples of content edited on Wikimedia projects
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Ontology/Mereology_Task_Force
Everything is here.
Additionally, share the materials and resources that you used in the implementation of your project. (required)
For example:
- Training materials and guides
- Presentations and slides
- Work processes and plans
- Any other materials your team has created or adapted and can be shared with others
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3. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with this Rapid Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals. Required. Select one option per question. (required)
| A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups | Not applicable |
| B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community | Agree |
| C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups | Not applicable |
| D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Not applicable |
| E. Encourage the retention of editors | Disagree |
| F. Encourage the retention of organizers | Disagree |
| G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement | Neither agree nor disagree |
| F. Other (optional) |
Part 2: Learning
4. In your application, you outlined some learning questions. What did you learn from these learning questions when you implemented your project? How do you hope to use this learnings in the future? You can recall these learning questions below. (required)
You can recall these learning questions below: Can we tackle a big problem with the concerted effort of a small group of people? Are “has part(s)” relationships beyond saving? Are qualifiers a good way to make these distinctions, or should the properties be split? (still a relevant question, even though we won’t be pushing the property creation way) What creative ways can we come up with to make Wikidata consistent and useful? Will the changes we make result in a big effect in what can be inferred?
The question about tackling a big problem with the concerted effort of a small group of people, I believe the answer is still yes, even though we couldn't accomplish that in this project. A Task Force formulation is still one of the best ways to tackle issues I think, but the interest in voluntarily joining a Task Force is much much less than joining other efforts, like a course. This was one of the main takeaways of this project, and one of the main reasons the project didn't reach some goals.
I think that mereological relationships are not beyond saving, and still important in an ontology, but that a lot of work still needs to be done. I have also seen both on my end and on others' that this is not really fun work for the most part. So I think that the saving of mereological relationships should be deferred to a later time.
I believe that we've found out that neither qualifiers nor property splits are really good ways of splitting these sorts of relationships. This is mostly because of a SSOT (Single Source of Truth) violation, which we talked about in the meetings. Basically, explaining that a "A is part of B" relationship as a "physical relationship", when A and B are both physical objects, means that we'll automatically have contradictory information if A or B changes. So we decided that this type of split was not worth it, at least not in the way we had described.
The creative ways to make Wikidata consistent and useful have been discussed a lot, to the point that we discussed this issue more so than most other issues in our meetings. In our meeting notes, many of the insights have been explained, which is going to be a really good document for me later on. For other people to benefit from it too, I may use AI tools to do a broad sweep and to extract valuable insights. I think this sort of discussion was the most significant outcome of the project.
The changes we made probably didn't make a big effect on what can be inferred, but the general effort to "make Wikidata useful", that we are going through, still seems potentially fruitful to us.
5. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities? This can include both positive and negative situations. What did you learn from those experiences? (required)
We formed a Task Force with 12 people in it, but practically, 4-6 were active for the most part. So I would say that we managed to form a 4 person core task force, with around 4 people who have been significant onlookers at different times. With these people, we held 19 meetings (numerically a few more than 19, but some we chatted about unrelated things instead, 19 did touch Mereology subjects in some way.)
We managed to get 10 efforts documented. Almost all were started by me, which showed me that the "effort system" doesn't necessarily work in getting people to start things.
6. What is your plan to share your project learnings and results with other community members? If you have already done it, describe how. (required)
All meeting notes are in the Mereology Task Force page and subpages.
One important outcome is that, in our general efforts about ontology things (in WikiProject Ontology), now Mereology has earned its place as something we have experience in. So our future work (on-wiki, and academic work) will have crumbs from this project.
Part 3: Metrics
7. Wikimedia Metrics results. (required)
In your application, you set some Wikimedia targets in numbers (Wikimedia metrics). In this section, you will describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used.
| Target | Results | Comments and tools used | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 15 | 11 | We have 11 members in the Telegram group, and some other people who have engaged with our efforts on-wiki. |
| Number of editors | 8 | 6 | We had 12 people apply and express interest in joining the Task Force, but in practice, the Task Force was 4-6 people, with some people who were only active at certain periods. |
| Number of organizers | 2 | 2 | Peter and Ege |
| Wikimedia project | Target | Result - Number of created pages | Result - Number of improved pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | |||
| Wikimedia Commons | |||
| Wikidata | 100000 | 0 | 250000 |
| Wiktionary | |||
| Wikisource | |||
| Wikimedia Incubator | |||
| Translatewiki | |||
| MediaWiki | |||
| Wikiquote | |||
| Wikivoyage | |||
| Wikibooks | |||
| Wikiversity | |||
| Wikinews | |||
| Wikispecies | |||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
8. Other Metrics results.
In your proposal, you could also set Other Metrics targets. Please describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used if you set Other Metrics in your application.
| Other Metrics name | Metrics Description | Target | Result | Tools and comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly meetings | We plan on doing weekly meetings, although there may be periods of hiatus. In total we think we'll have 15 meetings | 15 | 19 | There were periods of hiatus, and some meetings that we didn't take notes in, so the actual number may be slightly higher. But the goal for meetings that functionally were Mereology Task Force Meetings has been met. |
| 10 | I had wanted 50 efforts in total, but I couldn't get the members of the Task Force to do this sort of thing, and I didn't want to inflate my numbers by making frivolous efforts. | |||
9. Did you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results? (required)
No
9.1. Please state what difficulties you had. How do you hope to overcome these challenges in the future? Do you have any recommendations for the Foundation to support you in addressing these challenges? (required)
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]10. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency. (required)
3037.81
11. Please state the total amount spent in US dollars. (required)
3500
12. Report the funds spent in the currency of your fund. (required)
Provide the link to the financial report https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jRIn0PGmyx7WGWKth-VbPFXWAO7JnzX1RnNxD3E5GpY/edit?usp=sharing
12.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)
13. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?
No
13.1. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.
N/A
13.2. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
N/A
13.3. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
N/A
14.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?
Yes
14.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
Yes
14.3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
Yes
15. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. (optional)