Till Grallert

Was just watching a recording of the second day of #Wikimania in #Nairobi and happened on a #Wikidata presentation. A member of the audience suggested a tool registry to be implemented on top of Wikidata during the Q&A. As comments are disabled for the recordings (on YouTube), I would like to mention our modest effort at building exactly such a tool registry for the #DigitalHumanities.

The project website can be found at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_DH_Tool_Registry

#ToolRegistry @wikimediaDE

Wikidata:WikiProject DH Tool Registry - Wikidata

Aug 8, 2025 at 12:55pmWeb
Show threadJan AinaliAug 8, 2025
@tillgrallert @wikimediaDE
I skimmed the project page, and I don't think it serves the need the audience was asking for. They wanted a register for all Wikidata tools, whereas yours seems to use Wikidata itself as the register. That won't work for all Wikidata tools, as most of them are not notable enough to get their own item.
Show threadTill GrallertAug 8, 2025

@ainali @wikimediaDE I don’t see how you would arrive at the consensus that tools of relevance to the Wikidata community wouldn’t be notable enough to be included in Wikidata. Clearly they are sui generis notable to a significant number of people. In addition they easily satisfy the following criterion:

> It refers to an instance of a clearly identifiable conceptual or material entity that can be described using serious and publicly available references.

#Notability #Wikidata

Show threadJan AinaliAug 9, 2025

@tillgrallert @wikimediaDE that's exactly what I mean. They are usually only described by the author themselves. Previous discussions in the community have landed in, for example, that the wiki Wikimania uses is not a serious enough reference for the sessions of the conference, so I cannot see how this would be any better.

If a tool has been written about by someone else, perhaps on a news site, then they would clearly be notable.

Show threadJan AinaliAug 9, 2025
@tillgrallert @wikimediaDE
To take another example, every human, or Wikidata user, are not per default notable. Plenty of such items are deleted every day.
Show threadTill GrallertAug 9, 2025
@ainali @wikimediaDE there are millions of items on Wikidata without a single reference and without being deleted (as external links to references are not the sole criterion for notability). Take for example EditGroups (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q102332852) which is also an instance of (P31) “Wikidata tool”.
EditGroups

Show threadJan AinaliAug 9, 2025

@tillgrallert @wikimediaDE There's an old Wiki essay on that topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TenOfAllTrades/Do_you_ever_go_fishing%3F

TL;DR Two wrongs does not make one right.

User:TenOfAllTrades/Do you ever go fishing? - Wikipedia

Show threadJan AinaliAug 9, 2025
@tillgrallert @wikimediaDE That said, EditGroups is a tool one *could* find external references for, in contrast to most gadgets and user scripts.
Show threadTill GrallertAug 9, 2025
@ainali @wikimediaDE thanks for reminding me of this basic principle. Yet, that wasn’t my entire argument (even though one could read my toot as such). Rather the language in the second notability criterion is vage enough to be extremely permissive (not to mention the third criterion of structural necessity). Most tools “can [sic] be described” in principle “using serious and publicly available references”, depending on one’s understanding of “seriousness” and “public availability”. Many serious sources (such as the vast majority of all academic works), for instance, are all but publicly available in practice.