1 of 7

‘PopulationFromWikidata’

Lua module for place articles

Friday 18 August 2023

Maia Williams (MaiaCWilliams)

2 of 7

The project

Project blog post

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

  • Detailed project summary here
  • More documentation here

3 of 7

The challenge

Old method

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

lots of population figures to update!

  • Manual updates to pop, pop_year and pop_footnotes

Editing the Infobox Australian place template

* As at July 2022

Place article infobox

4 of 7

But … Wikidata!

Population statement in Wikidata

* 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*

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

5 of 7

Conceptual design

Which population value?

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

Module outputs

  • Population value
  • Detailed reference

6 of 7

PopulationFromWikidata Lua module

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

  • Now working in 3 134* articles!

PopulationFromWikidata module

Project summary graphs and tabular data

* As at 11 August 2023

Lua module outputs

Infobox edit to call module

7 of 7

Thanks!