Wikicite/grant/Improving Wikidata-Wikisource Integration/Report

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Goals[edit]

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?


While we didn’t have specific tools or modules to be developed in the original proposal, we believe that we have been successful in making progress in the space of improving integration between Wikidata and Wikisource, which falls well within the WikiCite by leveraging the use of linked bibliographic data. The overall progress made not only includes technical interventions, but also conversations and realizing opportunities for further work in this area.

Outcome[edit]

Please report on your original project targets.


Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
  • Technical interventions
  • MediaWiki modules: To display metadata from Wikidata on Wikisource index pages
  • Bot: To add Wikidata QIDs to index pages and populating P1957 on Wikidata.
Modules
A significant part of the modules was written by Tpt from French Wikisource, and further improvements made by Bodhisattwa from Bengali Wikisource, and Tshrinivasan as part of the WikiCite Project Grant.
Bot
  • User:WD-WS Integration Bot (source code): While the above modules retrieve data from Wikidata and display it on the index pages, they work only after the respective Wikidata QIDs are added to the index page form, which has to be done manually. The bot helps to automate the process of adding Wikidata QIDs to the index pages, to an extent. There is already a practice of linking the main page of a book to their respective Wikidata items on all Wikisources. With the help of the index page, the bot traces the main pages of books and then their linked Wikidata items, and adds them back to the Wikidata QID field on the index page form, which works with the above-mentioned modules. Subsequently, the bot also adds P1957 to respective Wikidata items. We will continue improving the bot's workflow based on community feedback.
The bot has been programmed by Tshrinivasan, as part of the WikiCite Project Grant.
Technical documentation mw:Wikidata - Wikisource Integration Modules
  • Detailed documentation on deploying the modules and get the bot running on a Wikisource has been written. The documentation will be updated to reflect any functional improvements made to the modules or the bot. Furthermore, support will be provided to any interested Wikisource communities, to deploy the modules.
  • The documentation can be intimidating for non-tech folks, so a screencast recording has been created to understand how to best use the documentation.
Community outreach
  • The project team has actively supported the deployment of modules on Punjabi, Tamil, and Indonesian Wikisources. The bot is running on Punjabi Wikisource.
  • A small presentation was made as “Stay safe, stay connected” Session II organized CIS-A2K.
Outlining opportunities https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/06/30/potential-opportunities-to-improve-integration-between-wikisource-and-wikidata-2021/
  • The project development along with further research and conversations with community members helped us to ideate a few interventions that further the use of linked data on Wikisource (largely on Wikidata). Though these are not “only” possibilities, it can be a good start, instead of beginning from the scratch again.


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?
  • We received consistent support from the Wikimedia Foundation staff and the community members whenever required. Especially during the initial phase of the setup and getting hold of the existing code base, this support had been crucial for us to move forward.
  • Just apart from producing documentation, we are happy to have supported a few communities to deploy the module. It is also happy to see that the communities are very interested in this work.
  • What did not work so well?
  • Though the developer on the project is experienced and skilled, not having specific deliverables (i.e. specific technical tools/scripts to be created) ready before the beginning of the project, cost us a lot of time in the initial months to onboard. That would help to better scope the requirements for the project.
  • Though test-Wikisource and test-Wikidata sites intended to be for testing purposes, it seems like the sites are not maintained. We were stuck at a point almost for three weeks as the site didn’t give the intended output, though the code was fine. We only realised this after we did move onto one of the “main” i.e. production wikis. Going forward, these sites should be made similar to test.wikipedia rather than on toolforge.
  • What would you do differently next time?
  • Scoping the specific deliverables before the project begins, what time and resources each of them would have required, better, before the project had begun, would have helped to achieve better results.

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.

  • Total spent: 9.909,30 €
  • Project Coordinator / Product Manager: 3.308,19 €
  • Developer: 5.561,56 €
  • Bank/transaction charges: 186,55 €
  • Fiscal sponsor fee: 853,00 €

Remaining funds[edit]

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

  • No
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