Wikicite/grant/Brazilian Laws: Modeling the Brazilian legislation in Wikidata/Report
Goals[edit]
Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went? Yes, we meet all of our goals.
We modeled and imported near 28 thousand items about Brazilian legislation in Wikidata, we documented the process in detail and created a user-friendly tool to facilitate the creation of this type of item in Wikidata. We faced some difficulties with the scrapping of the websites, but we managed to overcome all of them, and we believe that the knowledge gained in this process can be useful for others, independent of topic or language. We reached all of our measures of success.
Outcome[edit]
Please report on your original project targets.
| Target outcome | Achieved outcome | Explanation |
| Create a project page on wiki to organize the activities | WikiProject Brazilian Laws | We created the page not only to organize the activities but also as a way of reporting and documenting the process and methodology. |
| Create a schema crosswalk between Wikidata and Palácio do Planalto website | WikiProject Brazilian Laws/Schema crosswalk | The schema crosswalk is the essential step in any modeling of a database into Wikidata. We developed a schema crosswalk between Palácio do Planalto, LeXML Project, and Wikidata. |
| Model the metadata schema for each type of legislation act (decree, law, etc) for each period of time for the Brazilian legislation on the federal level | E301 | Both types of legislation have the same set of properties. The schema for statute (Q820655) and decree law (Q6453643) is a derivative of the schema crosswalk we developed. |
| Create an ever-growing, dynamic lexicon for the distinct terms of categorization of the Brazilian laws | WikiProject Brazilian Laws/Lexicon | More than 10 thousand distinct keywords are being used in the Brazilian laws and decree-laws. We only modeled the ones with more than 100 uses. The others are available in an open spreadsheet. |
| Load all the available legislation on Palácio do Planalto website in Wikidata and curate the ones that already exist | List of QuickStatements tickets of the uploads | We managed to upload at least 27700 items of laws and decree-laws into Wikidata, all scraped from LeXML and Palácio do Planalto websites. This was our first measure of success. |
| Develop an interface on Toolforge to translate the metadata from the Palácio do Planalto and LexML into QuickStatements commands to import into Wikidata | WikiProject Brazilian Laws Legislation Importer | We developed a user-friendly interface for Wikimedia users to create items about the Brazilian legislation on Wikidata. This tool stores lexicons with the keywords and terms used in the official sources; The reconciliation done by the users reverberates immediately to all users of the tool. In the Wikidata Lab about the project, we reached the goal of at least 100 successful uses of the tool.[1] That was our second measure of success. |
| Create in parallel the documentation for all steps |  |
We developed in parallel the documentation of the process and methodology we developed. In the pace that the project page, particularly the Scripts tab, describe in detail the codes we wrote, the handout is meant to be a detailed guide to the process and methodology we developed and can serve as a model to import all kinds of data into Wikidata. That was our fourth measure of success. This publication is written in English to amplify the content; We asked a native English speaker to review it before sending it to printing. |
| Promote a Wikidata Lab to improve community capacity | Wikidata Lab XXVII (page in portuguese) and the Outreach Dashboard results page | We promoted a Wikidata Lab event to present the project and the steps we followed to execute the activities. We had a presentation with 13 registered participants, followed by a practical activities session, where users created items about Brazilian legislation using the tool and we took feedback from them. That was our third and fifth measure of success. |
Lessons learned[edit]
Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:
- What worked well?
The wikidatification of the information was done smoothly, as we counted with experienced people to execute this aspect of the project. We also think that the project page is a good achievement and will serve as a base for future activities on this topic. The tool developed ran ok and the bugs were fixed; As new legislation items continue to be added to the databases, the collaboratively and collectively developed wikidatification will facilitate the creation or addition of metadata of the items in Wikidata. We believe that the practical activities in the Wikidata Lab served to outline the features that would be interesting in the tool and also discover which activities would be interesting in the project, such as the relation between revoked legislation and the importation of the full texts to Wikisource.
- What did not work so well?
Community engagement is always a challenge. We think the code challenges held us back in the timeline and we could have invested more in outreach, especially for users in the Wikisource community and institutions focused on Law knowledge.
- What would you do differently next time?
As for the future, we would like to invite community members and institutions to think about other activities around the topic in other projects as well, like Wikisource for the full texts of the legislation, and Wikipedia to increase the use of the items as references. We think that promoting at least one edit-a-thon event, focused on these different projects, would bring more participation and amplify the usage of the data imported to Wikidata.
Finances[edit]
Grant funds spent[edit]
Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.
| Budget item | Amount spent | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Development of the tool (U$ 3000 - 6 months (240 hours)) | USD 3026,31 |
|
| Curation of the metadata and lexicon creation (U$ 3000 - 4 months (120 hours, 2 persons)) | USD 3007,52 |
|
| Write, draw, diagram, print, and share handout (U$ 2000) | USD 1983,07 |
|
| Unexpected expenses | USD 28,16 |
|
| Total | USD 8045,06 | - |
Remaining funds[edit]
Do you have any remaining grant funds? No
Anything else[edit]
Anything else you want to share about your project? We would like to deeply thank the WikiCite project, especially Liam, with whom we have been in contact since the beginning of this project, for making these activities possible and we hope to continue to develop this and other projects of interest in the future. We hope the data we imported into Wikidata reverberates in other spaces as well.
References[edit]
- ↑ "Wikidata Lab XXVII". Outreach Dashboard. April 13, 2021. Retrieved May 14, 2021.