Yesterday, I wrote about the work we’re doing matching identifiers into Wikidata. Today, the tools we use for it!
Mix-and-match
The main tool we’re using is a beautiful thing Magnus developed called mix-and-match. It imports all the identifiers with some core metadata – for the ODNB, for example, this was names and dates and the brief descriptive text – and sorts them into five groups:
- Manually matched – these matches have been confirmed by a person (or imported from data already in Wikidata);
- Automatic – the system has guessed these are probably the same people but wants human confirmation;
- Unmatched – we have no idea who these identifiers match to;
- No Wikidata – we know there is currently no Wikidata match;
- N/A – this identifier shouldn’t match to a Wikidata entity (for example, it’s a placeholder, a subject Wikidata will never cover, or an cross-reference with its own entry).
The goal is to work through everything and move as much as possible to “manually matched”. Anything in this group can then be migrated over to Wikidata with a couple of clicks. Here’s the ODNB as it stands today:
(Want to see what’s happening with the data? The recent changes link will show you the last fifty edits to all the lists.)
So, how do we do this? Firstly, you’ll need a Wikipedia account, and to log in to our “WiDaR” authentication tool. Follow the link on the top of the mix-and-match page (or, indeed, this one), sign in with your Wikipedia account if requested, and you’ll be authorised.
On to the matching itself. There’s two methods – manually, or in a semi-automated “game mode”.
How to match – manually
The first approach works line-by-line. Clicking on one of the entries – here, unmatched ODNB – brings up the first fifty entries in that set. Each one has options on the left hand side – to search Wikidata or English Wikipedia, either by the internal search or Google. On the right-hand side, there are three options – “set Q”, to provide it with a Wikidata ID (these are all of the form Q—–, and so we often call them “Q numbers”); “No WD”, to list it as not on Wikidata; “N/A”, to record that it’s not appropriate for Wikidata matching.
If you’ve found a match on Wikidata, the ID number should be clearly displayed at the top of that page. Click “set Q” and paste it in. If you’ve found a match via Wikipedia, you can click the “Wikidata” link in the left-hand sidebar to take you to the corresponding Wikidata page, and get the ID from there.
After a moment, it’ll display a very rough-and-ready precis of what’s on Wikidata next to that line –
– which makes it easy to spot if you’ve accidentally pasted in the wrong code! Here, we’ve identified one person (with rather limited information, just gender and deathdate, currently in Wikidata, and marked another as definitely not found)
If you’re using the automatically matched list, you’ll see something like this:
– it’s already got the data from the possible matches but wants you to confirm. Clicking on the Q-number will take you to the provisional Wikidata match, and from there you can get to relevant Wikipedia articles if you need further confirmation.
How to match – game mode
We’ve also set up a “game mode”. This is suitable when we expect a high number of the unmatched entries to be connectable to Wikipedia articles; it gives you a random entry from the unmatched list, along with a handful of possible results from a Wikipedia search, and asks you to choose the correct one if it’s there. you can get it by clicking [G] next to the unmatched entries.
Here’s an example, using the OpenPlaques database.
In this one, it was pretty clear that their Roy Castle is the same as the first person listed here (remember him?), so we click the blue Q-number; it’s marked as matched, and the game generates a new entry. Alternatively, we could look him up elsewhere and paste the Q-number or Wikipedia URL in, then click the “set Q” button. If our subject’s not here – click “skip” and move on to the next one.
Finishing up
When you’ve finished matching, go back to the main screen and click the [Y] at the end of the list. This allows you to synchronise the work you’ve done with Wikidata – it will make the edits to Wikidata under your account. (There is also an option to import existing matches from Wikidata, but at the moment the mix-and-match database is a bit out of synch and this is best avoided…) There’s no need to do this if you’re feeling overly cautious, though – we’ll synchronise them soon enough. The same page will also report any cases where two distinct Wikidata entries have been matched to the same identifier, which (usually) shouldn’t happen.
If you want a simple export of the matched data, you can click the [D] link for a TSV file (Q-number, identifier, identifier URL & name if relevant), and some stats on how many matches to individual wikis are available with [S].
Brute force
Finally, if you have a lot of matched data, and you are confident it’s accurate without needing human confirmation, then you can adopt the brute-force method – QuickStatements. This is the tool used for pushing data from mix-and-match to Wikidata, and can be used for any data import. Instructions are on that page – but if you’re going to use it, test it with a few individual items first to make sure it’s doing what you think, and please don’t be shy to ask for help…
So, we’ve covered a) what we’re doing; and b) how we get the information into Wikidata. Next instalment, how to actually use these identifiers for your own purposes…