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| Facto Post – Issue 20 – 31 January 2019

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;Everything flows (and certainly data does)

Recently Jimmy Wales has made the point that computer home assistants take much of their data from Wikipedia, one way or another. So as well as getting Spotify to play Frosty the Snowman for you, they may be able to answer the question "is the Pope Catholic?" Possibly by asking for disambiguation (Coptic?).

File:Voice Search Amazon Echo vs Google.webm device using the Amazon Alexa service in voice search showdown with the Google rival on an Android phone]]

Headlines about data breaches are now familiar, but the unannounced circulation of information raises other issues. One of those is Gresham's law stated as "bad data drives out good". Wikipedia and now Wikidata have been criticised on related grounds: what if their content, unattributed, is taken to have a higher standing than Wikimedians themselves would grant it? See Wikiquote on a misattribution to Bismarck for the usual quip about "law and sausages", and why one shouldn't watch them in the making.

Wikipedia has now turned 18, so should act like as adult, as well as being treated like one. The Web itself turns 30 some time between March and November this year, per Tim Berners-Lee. If the Knowledge Graph by Google exemplifies Heraclitean Web technology gaining authority, contra GIGO, Wikimedians still have a role in its critique. But not just with the teenage skill of detecting phoniness.

There is more to beating Gresham than exposing the factoid and urban myth, where WP:V does do a great job. Placeholders must be detected, and working with Wikidata is a good way to understand how having one statement as data can blind us to replacing it by a more accurate one. An example that is important to open access is that, firstly, the term itself needs considerable unpacking, because just being able to read material online is a poor relation of "open"; and secondly, trying to get Creative Commons license information into Wikidata shows up issues with classes of license (such as CC-BY) standing for the actual license in major repositories. Detailed investigation shows that "everything flows" exacerbates the issue. But Wikidata can solve it.

;Links

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Day for 18th birthday celebrations
• [https://www.youtube.com/user/WikimediaUK WMUK video page], with "fake news", Jimmy Wales, Wikidata and more (health warning for those with tune allergy)
• [https://slate.com/technology/2019/01/wikipedia-doctors-medical-knowledge-study.html Why Wikipedia’s Medical Content Is Superior], Stephen Harrison, 28 January 2019, Slate
• [https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/celebrities/news/a26057928/olivia-colman-reveals-struggle-wikipedia-age/ Olivia Colman reveals struggle with Wikipedia over age], Naomi Gordon, 28 January 2019, harpersbazaar.com
• [http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/digital/2019/01/23/making-wikidata-visible/ Making Wikidata visible], Martin Poulter blogpost, 24 January 2019, Bodleian Digital Library
• [http://magnusmanske.de/wordpress/?p=604 Inventory], Magnus Manske blogpost, 24 January 2019, on Wikidata tech support for an image donation by Cleveland Museum of Art

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| Facto Post – Issue 21 – 28 February 2019

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;What is a systematic review?

Systematic reviews are basic building blocks of evidence-based medicine, surveys of existing literature devoted typically to a definite question that aim to bring out scientific conclusions. They are principled in a way Wikipedians can appreciate, taking a critical view of their sources.

File:PRISMA flow diagram.jpg

Ben Goldacre in 2014 wrote (link below) "[...] : the "information architecture" of evidence based medicine (if you can tolerate such a phrase) is a chaotic, ad hoc, poorly connected ecosystem of legacy projects. In some respects the whole show is still run on paper, like it's the 19th century." Is there a Wikidatan in the house? Wouldn't some machine-readable content that is structured data help?

File:Schittny, Facing East, 2011, Legacy Projects.jpg

Most likely it would, but the arcana of systematic reviews and how they add value would still need formal handling. The PRISMA standard dates from 2009, with an update started in 2018. The concerns there include the corpus of papers used: how selected and filtered? Now that Wikidata has a 20.9 million item bibliography, one can at least pose questions. Each systematic review is a tagging opportunity for a bibliography. Could that tagging be reproduced by a query, in principle? Can it even be second-guessed by a query (i.e. simulated by a protocol which translates into SPARQL)? Homing in on the arcana, do the inclusion and filtering criteria translate into metadata? At some level they must, but are these metadata explicitly expressed in the articles themselves? The answer to that is surely "no" at this point, but can TDM find them? Again "no", right now. Automatic identification doesn't just happen.

Actually these questions lack originality. It should be noted though that WP:MEDRS, the reliable sources guideline used here for health information, hinges on the assumption that the usefully systematic reviews of biomedical literature can be recognised. Its nutshell summary, normally the part of a guideline with the highest density of common sense, allows literature reviews in general validity, but WP:MEDASSESS qualifies that indication heavily. Process wonkery about systematic reviews definitely has merit.

;Links

• [https://guides.mclibrary.duke.edu/ebm/appraise Evidence-Based Practice: Appraise], resources page from Duke University Medical Library & Archives.
• [https://www.badscience.net/2014/11/what-should-cochrane-do-next/#more-3288 What should Cochrane do next?], Bad Science blogpost 5 November 2014, Ben Goldacre.
• [https://www.sciencefestival.cam.ac.uk/events/sciencesource-workshop-how-do-scientific-discoveries-become-clinical-medicine Cambridge (UK) Science Festival event, How do scientific discoveries become clinical medicine?], [http://sciencesource.wmflabs.org ScienceSource] workshop for ContentMine 23 March 2019, with systematic review process diagram. Also [https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/how-do-scientific-discoveries-become-clinical-medicine-festival-workshop-tickets-56499051183 on Eventbrite] for tickets, taking place in Makespace, 16 Mill Lane.
• [http://www.prisma-statement.org/Protocols/Registration PROSPERO database] of PRISMA, for registration of systematic review protocols.
• [https://marc.info/?t=115902699800001&r=3&w=2 Process wonkery thread], wikien-l mailing list, September 2006.
• [https://xkcd.com/1447/ Meta-Analysis], xkcd cartoon.

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|style="padding: 0; vertical-align: middle; height: 1.1em;" | File:Women in Red logo.svg April 2019, Volume 5, Issue 4, Numbers 107, 108, 114, 115, 116, 117

Hello and welcome to the April events of Women in Red!

Please join us for these virtual events:

• New topics: Gender studies / United Nations / Dance
• Geofocus: Portuguese-speakers
• Continuing initiatives: Suffrage / #1day1woman

Other ways you can participate:

• Help us plan our future events: Ideas Cafe
• Join the conversations on our talkpage
• Follow us on Twitter: [https://twitter.com/WikiWomenInRed @wikiwomeninred]

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| Facto Post – Issue 22 – 28 March 2019

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;When in the cloud, do as the APIs do

Half a century ago, it was the era of the mainframe computer, with its air-conditioned room, twitching tape-drives, and appearance in the title of a spy novel Billion-Dollar Brain then made into a Hollywood film. Now we have the cloud, with server farms and the client–server model as quotidian: this text is being typed on a Chromebook.

File:Cloud-API-Logo.svg]]

The term Applications Programming Interface or API is 50 years old, and refers to a type of software library as well as the interface to its use. While a compiler is what you need to get high-level code executed by a mainframe, an API out in the cloud somewhere offers a chance to perform operations on a remote server. For example, the multifarious bots active on Wikipedia have owners who exploit the MediaWiki API.

APIs (called RESTful) that allow for the GET HTTP request are fundamental for what could colloquially be called "moving data around the Web"; from which Wikidata benefits 24/7. So the fact that the Wikidata SPARQL endpoint at query.wikidata.org has a RESTful API means that, in lay terms, Wikidata content can be GOT from it. The programming involved, besides the SPARQL language, could be in Python, younger by a few months than the Web.

Magic words, such as occur in fantasy stories, are wishful (rather than RESTful) solutions to gaining access. You may need to be a linguist to enter Ali Baba's cave or the western door of Moria (French in the case of "Open Sesame", in fact, and Sindarin being the respective languages). Talking to an API requires a bigger toolkit, which first means you have to recognise the tools in terms of what they can do. On the way to the wikt:impactful or polymathic modern handling of facts, one must perhaps take only tactful notice of tech's endemic problem with documentation, and absorb the insightful point that the code in APIs does articulate the customary procedures now in place on the cloud for getting information. As Owl explained to Winnie-the-Pooh, it tells you The Thing to Do.

;Links

• [http://europepmc.org/articles/pmc4795929 Wikidata as a semantic framework for the Gene Wiki initiative], 2016 paper by {{noping|Andrawaag}} and others, commenting inter alia on the role of the API on Wikidata
• [https://www.digitalflapjack.com/blog/2018/11/25/working-with-wikibase-from-go Working With Wikibase From Go], Digital Flapjack blogpost 26 November 2018, Michael Dales, developer for [http://sciencesource.wmflabs.org ScienceSource] using golang, with a software engineer's view on Wikibase and the MediaWiki API
• [http://magnusmanske.de/wordpress/?p=608 Dealing with the Rust], Magnus Manske blogpost 12 March 2019, on the Rust language and the MediaWiki API
• mw:API:RecentChanges, mediawiki.org page on the API for access to "recent changes" on a wiki
• wikitech:Analytics/AQS/Pageviews, wikitech.wikimedia.org for the Pageview API, giving Wikimedia traffic information
• [https://xkcd.com/1481/ xkcd cartoon, API Guide]

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| Facto Post – Issue 23 – 30 April 2019

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;Completely clouded?

File:Cloud computing icon.svg

Talk of cloud computing draws a veil over hardware, but also, less obviously but more importantly, obscures such intellectual distinction as matters most in its use. Wikidata begins to allow tasks to be undertaken that were out of easy reach. The facility should not be taken as the real point.

Coming in from another angle, the "executive decision" is more glamorous; but the "administrative decision" should be admired for its command of facts. Think of the attitudes ad fontes, so prevalent here on Wikipedia as "can you give me a source for that?", and being prepared to deal with complicated analyses into specified subcases. Impatience expressed as a disdain for such pedantry is quite understandable, but neither dirty data nor false dichotomies are at all good to have around.

Issue 13 and Issue 21, respectively on WP:MEDRS and systematic reviews, talk about biomedical literature and computing tasks that would be of higher quality if they could be made more "administrative". For example, it is desirable that the decisions involved be consistent, explicable, and reproducible by non-experts from specified inputs.

What gets clouded out is not impossibly hard to understand. You do need to put together the insights of functional programming, which is a doctrinaire and purist but clearcut approach, with the practicality of office software. Loopless computation can be conceived of as a seamless forward march of spreadsheet columns, each determined by the content of previous ones. Very well: to do a backward audit, when now we are talking about Wikidata, we rely on integrity of data and its scrupulous sourcing: and clearcut case analyses. The MEDRS example forces attention on purge attempts such as Beall's list.

;Links

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-03-31/In focus#The_Wikipedia_SourceWatch by {{noping|Headbomb}}.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Journals cited by Wikipedia/Questionable1
• d:Wikidata:ScienceSource project/Beall's list: Beall's list, final version, matched into Wikidata.
• [https://query.wikidata.org/#%23Quackwatch%20filter%3A%20finds%20focus%20list%20items%20that%20are%20published%20in%20journals%20in%20the%20%22Journals%20%28Fundamentally%20Flawed%29%22%0A%23section%20of%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quackwatch.org%2F04ConsumerEducation%2Fnonrecperiodicals.html.%0A%23Matching%20to%20Wikidata%20carried%20out%20on%202019-04-09%0ASELECT%20DISTINCT%20%3Fitem%20%3FitemLabel%20%3Fjournal%20%3FjournalLabel%0A%0A%20%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%0A%20%20%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP5008%20wd%3AQ55439927%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20wdt%3AP1433%20%3Fjournal.%0A%20%20%20%20%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20VALUES%20%3Fjournal%20%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%7Bwd%3AQ15754497%20wd%3AQ15279374%20wd%3AQ27720778%20wd%3AQ15756796%20wd%3AQ6294757%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ15752906%20wd%3AQ27711374%20wd%3AQ10310914%20wd%3AQ15760198%20wd%3AQ10310916%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%7D%20%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%7D%20%20%20%20%20%0A%20%0ASERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22%5BAUTO_LANGUAGE%5D%2Cen%22.%20%7D%0A%20%20%20%20%7D SPARQL query for Quackwatch]: query to find items on Wikidata for articles subject to the [https://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/nonrecperiodicals.html Quackwatch blacklist of "Nonrecommended Periodicals"], under "Journals (Fundamentally Flawed)".
• [https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20%3Fitem%20%3FitemLabel%20%3FjournalLabel%0A%20%20WHERE%20%7B%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ45182324%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20wdt%3AP1433%20%3Fjournal.%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22%5BAUTO_LANGUAGE%5D%2Cen%22.%20%7D%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%7D SPARQL query to find retracted articles on Wikidata].
• d:Wikidata:ScienceSource project/NCBI2wikidata dashboard, metadata for biomedical articles being built up, sourced from PubMed and PubMed Central.

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| Facto Post – Issue 24 – 17 May 2019File:Tripletsnew2012.png

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;Semantic Web and TDM – a ContentMine view

Two dozen issues, and this may be the last, a valediction at least for a while.

It's time for a two-year summation of ContentMine projects involving TDM (text and data mining).

Wikidata and now Structured Data on Commons represent the overlap of Wikimedia with the Semantic Web. This common ground is helping to convert an engineering concept into a movement. TDM generally has little enough connection with the Semantic Web, being instead in the orbit of machine learning which is no respecter of the semantic. Don't break a taboo by asking bots "and what do you mean by that?"

The ScienceSource project innovates in TDM, by storing its text mining results in a Wikibase site. It strives for compliance of its fact mining, on drug treatments of diseases, with an automated form of the relevant Wikipedia referencing guideline MEDRS. Where WikiFactMine set up an API for reuse of its results, ScienceSource has a SPARQL query service, with look-and-feel exactly that of Wikidata's at query.wikidata.org. It also now has a custom front end, and its content can be federated, in other words used in data mashups: it is one of over 50 sites that can federate with Wikidata.

The human factor comes to bear through the front end, which combines a link to the HTML version of a paper, text mining results organised in drug and disease columns, and a SPARQL display of nearby drug and disease terms. Much software to develop and explain, so little time! Rather than telling the tale, Facto Post brings you ScienceSource links, starting from the how-to video, lower right.

File:ScienceSourceReview1.webm]

;Links for participation

• http://sciencesource-review.wmflabs.org/, review tool link in the left-hand sidebar at http://sciencesource.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page

The review tool requires a log in on sciencesource.wmflabs.org, and an OAuth permission (bottom of a review page) to operate. It can be used in simple and more advanced workflows. Examples of queries for the latter are at d:Wikidata_talk:ScienceSource project/Queries#SS_disease_list and d:Wikidata_talk:ScienceSource_project/Queries#NDF-RT issue.

Please be aware that this is a research project in development, and may have outages for planned maintenance. That will apply for the next few days, at least. The ScienceSource wiki main page carries information on practical matters. Email is not enabled on the wiki: use site mail here to {{noping|Charles Matthews}} in case of difficulty, or if you need support. Further explanatory videos will be put into commons:Category:ContentMine videos.

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