User talk:Bovlb

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Dear @Bovlb:

       TL;DR:

First, thank you for being a Mix'n'match [1] user.

Does the name soweego ring you a bell?
It's a machine learning system that links Wikidata to large catalogs [2].
It's a close friend of Mix'n'match, which mainly caters for small catalogs.

The latest catalogs uploaded by soweego need some love: why don't you check them out?
If you are a music enthusiast, Discogs and MusicBrainz are what you need: musicians [3], [4], bands [5], [6], and records [7], [8].
Are you passionate about cinema? IMDb is there with actors [9], directors [10], musicians [11], producers [12], writers [13], and movies [14].

I would be really grateful if you could support soweego with a GitHub star:
https://github.com/Wikidata/soweego

Best,

--Hjfocs (talk) 19:17, 23 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

Hey Bovlb,

Sorry to see how your recent requests went on SRGP. The global community can be quite reluctant to grant global permissions to people without wide horizontal experience in counter-vandalism and/or maintenance across many projects and language groups. If you are still interested in volunteering with those permissions, I would recommend getting a bit more experience reverting vandalism across language barriers, and reference specific examples when filing your request. Matiia offered good and similar advice on your now-closed GR request.

In the meantime, I have exempted your account from CAPTCHAs globally since you probably aren't a spambot.

Thanks for your help across the movement and regards, – Ajraddatz (talk) 02:18, 18 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

Thought you might want to see Requests for comment/Large scale language inaccuracies on the Scots Wikipedia if you haven't already. Are you interested in being an admin on the Scots Wikipedia? Best regards, James Salsman (talk) 19:44, 28 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Dear @Bovlb

I apologize for the delay in my response. I've reviewed all the issues raised on https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Recent_crop_of_new_Nigerian_items and your concerns are being addressed. All points have been duly noted. Rest assured, everything will be handled effectively to resolve these matters. I appreciate your contributions and suggestions, all of which will be implemented.

I will keep you posted on any development. SadiqY56 (talk) 11:54, 27 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Dear sir

My apologies for making mistaking in editing Wikidata. I saw your message which I was unable to reply. Thank you for the observation on the proposal,I have your correction, I am going to add experience editors on wikidata for the project.

I am a volunteer editor. I have never received any money to create items for anyone.

I hope to learn more from you about notability sir. Inyor4mr (talk) 19:05, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hi, @Bovlb! I have received some reports on your "OPPOSE" to me as a trainer on Wikidata on proposals; I wasn't even listed as a Wikidata Trainer or connection thereof submitted for consideration due to your "concern about my recent edits". In all honesty, I will never deliberately display "lack of appreciation for (Wikidata) project policy" as claimed, and most of my edits have been on notable academics, politicians, etc., with references to demonstrate their notability.
In rare cases where there are no online references, I take extral measures to get published materials and create Wikidata entry on them and useas a referenecto further support my entry. I would like to understand your concern clearly and how best to tackle issues raised Thanks for your time and efforts in moderating activities on Wikidata and i look forward to hearing from you. Regards. Atibrarian (talk) 00:24, 2 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi! Thanks for following up. Grant proposals are often not very specific about how much training is involved for each project, and the specific role of each team member. I have therefore been reviewing all team members for which a user account is known, and assessing them for their suitability as a Wikidata trainer and role model. If you are not planning to participate in Wikidata training, then my comments are not applicable.

Looking at your contributions, I see that you have created 12 items that have been deleted. The most recent were 2023-1219, 2023-12-14, 2023-12-14, and 2023-12-01, so this is recent. All four were deleted as lacking notability after being nominated at wikidata:WD:RFD. Reviewing these four items, I found one identifier (a Facebook page) and no references. This indicates that you are not considering Wikidata's notability criteria when creating items.

Looking at the abuse filter log, I see that you made mistakes such as using wikidata:Q116741172 as a human gender, malformatting telephone numbers, and malformatting Twitter identifiers.

Look at your reverted contributions, I see mostly self-reverts, plus a couple of sitelink additions for articles that were subsequently deleted.

I want to emphasize that nothing I have seen here suggests any deliberate misconduct. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone has to learn. A high rate of mistakes, however, creates work for other volunteers to tidy up. I'm sorry that no-one has drawn these concerns to your attention in the past, as I'm sure you are motivated to learn and improve.

In the meantime, however, the Wikidata project sees a lot of new users who make mistakes of this type. Based on patterns, we have a specific concern that there are community outreach efforts where participants end up trying to create items without learning the basics of notability and the rest. We believe that this may arise from Wikidata trainers who lack the experience and knowledge to communicate these skills to others. In particular, we identified one project that was leading to a lot of deleted items where both trainers had a substantial history of deleted items. This is why I have been reviewing the Wikidata experience of team members for grant proposals that mention Wikidata. Bovlb (talk) 02:13, 2 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Well, I believe the particular proposals were clear in their area of focus. On the m:Wiki for Minorities Project, I was listed as a facilitator on the Article Creation process on Wikipedia, while the other proposal is an education program-based m:Education/Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom focusing on media and information literacy skills development, which are both unrelated to Wikidata training. Hence, the opposition was uncalled for and detrimental to the grantee.

Humans are bound to make mistakes. I mostly edit with my faulty mobile phone, which has poor sensor touch response. I do revert to the mistake, which I believe is honorable, rather than leave it. As for the four deleted items initially created, I would like to request restoration. Please ping me. There are references to establish their notability. I could not contribute to the deletion discussionas I was preoccupied off-wiki. due to festivity

In all, I look forward to more fruitful engagement and learning from your experience both technical and policy-wise, to improve my knowledge base here. Kind regards! Atibrarian (talk) 15:28, 2 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

When I did my review, I evaluated all identified team members as "Wikidata trainers / role models", regardless of the stated role. I concede that this analysis may be imperfect in the context of specific proposals, but it seemed the simplest way to proceed and also the way to produce the best information for decision making. Roles are fluid. If a specific team member is definitely not going to have any role in Wikidata training, then that would be a perfectly valid response to my review.

Just to clarify one point, I brought up "reverted contributions" because is one of the checks I perform, but it is one you passed. My apologies if that was unclear. Self-reverts show up in the scan, but I don't count self-corrections as problems. Similarly, adding sitelinks is generally good, and I did not evaluate whether you could have anticipated those articles would be deleted.

Again, I appreciate your good faith efforts to improve. If you want to request restoration of your deleted items, please see wikidata:Wikidata:Guide to requests for undeletion. You need to do that at Wikidata, not here. Bovlb (talk) 16:39, 2 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi @Bovlb, I have seen your comments around grants concerning Wikidata that I find reasonable. My team at DCW has advocated through our strategic trajectory that community resources are not meant for leisure and fun, rather for the support of the larger infrastructre. In our upcoming plan, we are focusing on capacity development and I've ideas to include a few Wikidata related training sessions as well. In my volunteer capacity, I contribute as TheAafi, and am a translation administrator on Commons, Meta and Wikidata, apart from being a sysop on Commons. I also contribute on Urdu Wikipedia as an eliminator. Having said that, I want to hear from you, what things should my team consider for these workshops. Our major aim is to help document global Muslim academia, scholarship, culture, heritage and history. I'd in accordance make changes in plan. Best regards, ─ Aafi @ DCW (^talk) 07:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'd also want to invite you to be a speaker at any of our upcoming Conversation Hours, for a better reach. ─ Aafi @ DCW (^talk) 07:33, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the invitation, but I don't think that would work well with my timezone. Bovlb (talk) 16:22, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for getting in touch. From my work as an administrator on Wikidata, I think I would want training to include these four key points:

1. Every project, Wikidata included, has notability criteria that say which items are appropriate for inclusion. This needs to be taken into account when deciding what items to contribute. Specifically, editors should be strongly discouraged from trying to contribute items about themselves or their friends. Wikidata is neither a social media site, nor an advertising platform.
2. For an item to stay at Wikidata, it should be clear how it meets the Wikidata criteria. If it doesn't have a sitelink and isn't used by another item, then it should have both identifiers and references. If you don't make it clear how an item is notable, then your contributions may be discarded. In particular, many new editors create items with no claims whatsoever, apparently under the impression that Wikidata is a text-based project.
3. Read the help pages. Use the tutorial. Ask questions. Start by improving existing items. When creating your first item, first find some similar items to act as examples.
4. Wikidata is a collaborative project. Don't create an item and just walk away. You may receive feedback that needs a response. If you don't respond, this might lead to your contributions being discarded.

Also, I'd recommend an essay I wrote, wikidata:User:Bovlb/How to create an item on Wikidata so that it won't get deleted. Bovlb (talk) 16:20, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you @Bovlb. I have linked your recommendation on our activity plans page. ─ Aafi @ DCW (^talk) 13:00, 22 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

@TheAafi (DCW) I recently came across wikidata:Wikidata:Planning a Wikidata workshop, which may contain useful information for you. Bovlb (talk) 21:20, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Bovlb: Thank you. This is really very insightful piece from @Astinson (WMF). ─ Aafi @ DCW (^talk) 06:08, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am so glad that was useful! Designing a training is rather complicated -- especially if you don't have previous experience doing trainings on technical topics, and then Wikidata adds tones of complexity. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Since you've joined the conversation, I'll take this opportunity to point out that one thing missing from your document is how best to inform local projects about your event. You might find the active thread wikidata:Wikidata:Administrators'_noticeboard#All_the_participants_of_an_editathon_blocked to be thought-provoking. Bovlb (talk) 19:45, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

For your efforts to shine some light and improve the grant making system. Piotrus (talk) 02:21, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply