Wikidata:Planning a Wikidata Workshop/Adding basic statements to Wikidata items by engaging newbies

This page is an activity that can be used as part of a Wikidata training. If you want to learn how to run the workshops, see the larger lesson plan.

Summary

Adding basic statements to items without any statements (claims) on Wikidata but an existing entry on a Wikimedia project (Wikipedia, Wikisource etc.) is a good on-boarding activity for beginners. This also helps in the filling the knowledge gaps and ensuring the quality of the content.

Expected outcomes

Participants in this activity will:

• learn basics of Wikidata
• how to add statements, references and other data to Wikdiata items
• help in filling the gaps in content on various Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wiktionary etc.) and their corresponding Wikidata items.

Tools or skills required

What skills does the workshop leader need in order to run this activity?

• Familiarity with manually adding statements, identifiers, images, references etc. to Wikidata.
• Basic knowledge of PetScan (Using categories, subset, union, negative categories to create specific lists)

Preparation

Before running this workshop, workshop leaders will need to…

• Ensure the attendees have a Wikidata user account.
• Prepare a list of Items to work on
• The list can be created using this page: Wikidata:Database reports/without claims by site
• Listing the items based on a specific category such as "Humans" is good for beginners
• Prepare a list of statements to be added to the item
• Assign item(s) to each of the participants

Examples

Building a list of people on Hindi Wikipedia whose corresponding Wikidata items don't contain any statement.

Instructions

Instructions for the leader

Before participants can do this activity, the instructor needs to demonstrate…

1. Step 1: How to login to Wikidata
2. Step 2: What a Model Wikidata item looks like
3. Step 3: How to add label, description and aliases in one or more languages
4. Step 4: How to add statements to an item
5. Step 5: How to add references to a statement
6. Step 6: Demonstrate the same on 1-2 items in the list
7. Step 7: Tell the participants to do the same

Instructions for participants

Participants in this activity, will follow the following steps ..

1. Step 1: Login to Wikidata
2. Step 2: Open one item without a claim
3. Step 3: Add label, description and aliases in your language if it doesn't exist already
4. Step 4: Start adding statements such as "instance of" (P31) - "human" (Q5)
5. Step 5: Adding information to items linked with the item you just improved

Additional considerations

• Make sure to add information to items related to the item you just improved. For example, if you added a book under notable works of a person, you should go the book's item and add author statement.
• Make sure to review the items edited by the participants and provide feedback.

Links

• Wikidata:Database reports/without claims by site
• Wikidata:Database reports/without claims by site/frequent categories
• Wikidata:Model items