Langue: English
Once upon a time (because all good stories start with a once upon a time), a Wikimedian in Scotland went looking for mythical creatures in Wikidata. Along the way she found cavernous gaps in data, beautiful strangeness, peculiarities of data modelling, fictional taxons, and a whole host of other curiosities. Expect poetic language, and a reflection on what it means to try to capture the mythic in structured data.
This is a short story by a Wikimedian, writer and storyteller who has an interest in folklore, Intangible Cultural Heritage, Wikidata, OpenRefine and data storytelling.
There are some things that can be captured well in Wikidata, and some for which it is more challenging. Not all things fit easily into the triples we have defined. And there are types of knowledge which we know from experience are harder to represent and reflect on Wikipedia, such as oral history, or community memory. Not all knowledge fits into the boxes that we create on the Wikimedia projects, and not all types of things can or indeed should be released under an open license. Taking part in Wiki Loves Folklore this year, and responding to the UK Government’s consultation on the implementation of the UNESCO 2003 Convention for Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage inspired some exploration and reflection on my part about how we represent myths, legends and mythical creatures in Wikidata. How does folklore, which evolves and changes with the folk from which it springs, react to an attempt to capture it in open data? What are the challenges in writing about the Intangible, when it comes to cultural heritage?
I’m also part of the 2023-24 Train the Trainer cohort for OpenRefine, and have been learning about how to use the tool to explore, edit, and upload data onto Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. So I’ve been playing around with SPARQL queries and OpenRefine to see what I could learn about both, how they could help me understand data, and ultimately how I could use them to support projects and volunteers in my role at Wikimedia UK. Some of that will be evident here.
This session will be delivered / performed as a story, and reflect on gaps in data, difficulties around data modelling, and the intersection between the digital and the intangible. There may also be a giant Scottish snake.
This idea came about partly because of the work I’ve been doing in engaging with the UK Goverment’s consultation process around Intangible Cultural Heritage, which got me thinking again about the ethics of collaboration with groups working in this area, and how we can engage with communities to ethically represent their work and knowledge within the open knowledge sector more widely.
When I’m learning a new Wikimedia tool or trying to find ways to support community members, or coming up with ideas for programmes, I often find that creative approaches can be quite beneficial in finding a way forward. I’ve learned a lot about Wikidata (& now OpenRefine) by putting time aside each week play with datasets that particularly interest me, especially ones that aren’t what you’d traditionally call “serious”, and I’m hoping to share some of that approach here. This session is, in part, an invitation to engage in the playful in this big Open space in which we exist.
Quel est le niveau d'expérience requis pour le public de votre session? –Everyone can participate in this session
Comment comptez-vous animer cette session? –Onsite in Katowice
Dans quels autres thèmes ou sujets s’inscrit votre session? Veuillez sélectinner dans la liste de choix ci-dessous. –Campaigns, Storytelling