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‘PopulationFromWikidata’

Lua module for place articles

Friday 18 August 2023

Maia Williams (MaiaCWilliams)

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The project

Project blog post

  • Funded by: Wikimedia Australia
  • Context: Wikidata fellowship
  • Mentors: Samwilson, 99of9, Canley and Tenniscourtisland
  • Timeframe: April - July 2022

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  • Detailed project summary here
  • More documentation here

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The challenge

Old method

  • 15 000 Australian place articles in English Wikipedia
  • 12 300* with population values

lots of population figures to update!

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  • Manual updates to pop, pop_year and pop_footnotes

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Editing the Infobox Australian place template

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* As at July 2022

Place article infobox

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But … Wikidata!

Population statement in Wikidata

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* Thanks to ABS ID matching and bulk Quickstatement uploads by 99of9, Canley and others.

  • All Australian place articles are

linked to Wikidata items

  • Most place items include consistent population statements*

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  • Use a Lua module to select population value and give to Infobox Australian Place template

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Conceptual design

Which population value?

  1. Must have good reference information
  2. Applies to part matches Infobox place type
  3. Most recent value

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Population value selection method

Module outputs

  • Population value
  • Detailed reference

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PopulationFromWikidata Lua module

  • Module called when pop value removed from Infobox Australian Place template

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  • Now working in 3 134* articles!

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PopulationFromWikidata module

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Project summary graphs and tabular data

* As at 11 August 2023

Lua module outputs

Infobox edit to call module

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Thanks!

MaiaCWilliams

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Lua module: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:PopulationFromWikidata

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Project summary:

https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Populating_Wikipedia:_New_tool_integrating_Australian_Census_data