Grants:TPS/Harmonia Amanda/Wikimania/2018/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2018!

Participant

Harmonia Amanda

Wikidata and french community (Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikisource)

Outcome

Option 3: New Creation: What was one useful outcome of the event for the Wikimedia movement?

After much deliberation, I think i'll go with option 3. I explained and helped people put in place the "databox" system. We have worked for months on a fully-automated infoboxes system, even more basic than the ones put in place by the Basque and Catalan communities (which require some lua local adaptations) for the really small communities where there is not enough coders. User:Tpt coded the Wikidata:Module:Databox during the Hackathon this year. I spent a good part of Wikimania teaching people about this system, how to use it, how to use translations tools on Wikidata to facilitate the work and how to let workshops about Wikidata so they could then teach their own communities. The template has been deployed on six additionnal Wikipedias since the beginning of Wikimania (three during, three after), for nine total. Here is one use on the Atikamekw Wikipedia: Wikipedia:atj:Edmond Ottawa.

Connections

I met with a dozen different persons from small African-languages Wikipedia, which was great. Since a speaker couldn't be here to led his workshop, I "hijacked" his spot and spoke about totally-automated-Wikidata-powered infoboxes for small languages. There were approximatively twenty people in the room.

I was really happy to be able to met with people I work with all year, because sometimes it's easier to discuss things orally. I was able to find solutions and ideas for long-term project (the data about Broadway, a script about names on Wikidata...). I was able to discuss two different bugs with the Wikidata team.

I met many new people and I learnt many things. I used the hackathon time (I'm not a coder myself) to write documentation and teach newcomers about Wikidata and SPARQL. I also explained the difficulties of creating ontologies in an multilingual project, and some people reached to me after to help them put in place wikidata workshops like the ones I've led in France since two years ago.

I was also able to introduce people to each other, which made me feel useful! And in turn, some of the people presented me their wonderful projects (like Shape Expressions). It was an intense but good experience.

Anything else

I really liked this year idea of food booths, which allowed ud to eat practically when we wanted and not all always together. It made choosing our own schedule easier.

I would have liked if a quiet room had been available, even if it has just been an additional hotel room. With so many people, even if I was prepared for that, I sometimes felt overwhelmed. I was lucky to have my bedroom in the same venue but I know some other autistic people didn't have the same chance as me.