Discussion Room/2

The Discussion Room is a space for open and facilitated discussions at Wikimania that are actually about the content projects. Participation of the audience in the session is critical, because there are no speakers, and there is no expert panel!

You can find a full overview of the discussion topics on the Discussion Room main page. Please note: there is limited seating available, and we're not saving any seats! Please be on time, but feel free to join during the midway break between two discussions.

Basic facts

Discussion topics this session

2a: When to include data from Wikidata in a content page, and when not?
2b: Citing sources in biographies of living people

Notes: 2a https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/2015-discussionroom-2a; 2b https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/2015-discussionroom-2b

Facilitator of this session: (to be determined)

Length of this session: 40 minutes + 40 minutes (with a 5 minute break in between)

Approach

Each discussion targets specifically online Wikimedia projects, it lasts 40 minutes and it starts with a short 5 minutes introduction.
To set the tone of our discussions, we have three rules:

Focus on YOU. We are interested in discussing and triggering individual action, things people can personally do and change to improve our Wikimedia projects. We trust the discussion can be much more interesting if we do not focus on what others should do ("the others", Wikimedia chapters and Wikimedia Foundation).
Be constructive and polite. Disagreements animate discussions and they can allow us to unfold all issues related to a topic. Let's avoid personal attacks, let's consider that we have different backgrounds and let's aim at making everybody comfortable in sharing their legitimate point of view.
Be short and on topic. Let's create space for everyone to express his/her opinion.

When to include data from Wikidata in a content page, and when not?

Wikidata is a no longer a new project, and is getting more and more mature. One of the advantages of a shared database is that different projects can use it to directly cite information. But under which circumstances should this happen? And when not? Should direct inclusion be used for stable data or data that is changing a lot? Are there other conditions that should be met?

The aim of this discussion is to come with some general recommendations regarding when data from Wikidata should be included in articles/pages of Wikimedia projects.

Citing sources in biographies of living people

Biographies of living people have been a hot topic ever since the 2005 Seigenthaler discussions. One of the outcomes in English Wikipedia was to have a stronger emphasis on citing sources. Different language editions approach this in a different way. What are the different approaches, and are they very different, or do they come down to the same? And how does that work out in practice?

During this discussion we will aim to get a better overview of the different approaches in use, and we will discuss a few advantages/disadvantages.

Interested attendees

...