An interesting outcome of the Wikipedia Science Conference this week is a
project to get a complete set of Fellows of the Royal Society on Wikidata
as items. This began yesterday afternoon, and already about a dozen people
have joined in. I have just done Albert Einstein, so there are still rich
pickings.
This all happens on the mix'n'match tool at
https://tools.wmflabs.org/mix-n-match/?mode=random&catalog=92&submo…
(requires WiDar authorisation, which in turn requires you are logged in on
Wikipedia, but is no big deal).
Helpful is the very good alphabetical list we have up at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Fellows_of_the_Royal_Society
which has already helped me resolve a case where a FRS with a German
surname had a variant spelling. Those lists (alphabetical division) show
that the English Wikipedia already has fairly good coverage. The strategy
of getting a complete set onto Wikidata, and then look what needs to be
created and/or translated is the modern way of improving it.
Something else that is not so positive came up also: the Royal Society
website has been revamped, and many links that ran to it are now broken.
This illustrates the general "link rot" phenomenon which was covered in one
of the conference talks, by Geoffrey Bilder of CrossRef.
Charles