Maintaining information on African politicians

There are many Wikipedias in many languages with an African public. They all have their own public and we want to share the sum of all knowledge with them all of them. Maintaining complete information on all the major African politicians on all these Wikipedias in text based articles is not realistic.

On many projects there are links for African politicians and when the Listeria bot is active. It will update the links whenever there is an update and it will perform this update on any Wikipedia that shares these links. For someone like Mr Bola Ahmed Tinubu it is likely that there will be an article and it will be show in the list. For someone like Mr Osagie Ehanire this is less likely and it will show a link to Wikidata.

In a personal project there are many national politicians for African countries.. The idea is that when something changes, it is reflected in the Listeria list on all the participating Wikipedias.. Recently I have done some work on Nigerian politicians, later office holders and some new Listeria lists. The new lists have to be added on other Wikipedias for them to share the latest data. 

New national elections will be held in Nigeria in November .. There will be many new people who will be a candidate and compete with incumbent politicians. They all belong to parties, they studied, some may already be known to Wikidata. They may make claims about their education, their background and yes, all these claims can be verified and find a place at Wikidata. For both claims that can and cannot be substantiated there is room if only to support a public that is to make a choice.

Thanks,

       GerardM

#Wikidata - May 7th #Elections in South Africa

South Africa will elect members to its National Assembly. Some of its members have a Wikipedia article but most do not. They are however "known" because of red links in a list and as red links in a template.

Adding them to Wikidata is easy and, by adding a distinct statement: "position held" "member of the National Assembly" everything is in place to select them using AutoList. Obvious statements to make are "is a" "human", "nationality" "South Africa" and "occupation" "politician".

The information shown for members of the National Assemblee looks like this in the Reasonator. As these members of the National Assemblee do not have an article, WD-Search enables access to this information. For all these new items there are only four statements requiring eight labels.

When the results of the elections are in, many of the incumbents will be re-elected. When the list of winners includes that fact, it will be easy to complement the list of members of the National Assembly with the latest crop of representatives of the South African people.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Who cares about the process ...

A lot of "drama" can be observed in how the elections for the WMF board are run. There are many ways in which the process can be seen. The thing that bothers me most is that even though the process was defined prior to the actual running, the way it is run has changed a lot during the process.

The best example is the effort of Gregory Maxwell to "get the votes out". The way he has done it, is really American. Bringing people to the registration office and then actually getting them to the voting booth is done by all US-American parties. This is accepted in that system while it is not done in the systems I am familiar with. Greg invited everyone from the English language Wikipedia who had not voted yet to vote.

As it is so clear that the process is allowed to change while under way, I invite you to Danny Wool's question list where he is asked why he has not bothered the call for him not to stand. The reason why he was not prevented from running is that the process of the vote was considered to be defined. Danny proved unwilling to answer the question.

The process of the vote is that once the results are known, the board is to pass a resolution announcing the result. As a result of the previous vote, the board nominated three people in stead of the one the vote was called for. So I agree with our "drama queen"; the board can repudiate results it does not like. I am known to be of the opinion that Danny should not be a candidate in the first place as his behaviour makes it quite clear to me that he his hostility towards other board members. Also given the statutes of the WMF when Danny were to be elected, he can be removed when my misgivings about him prove to be correct.

What we have observed in these elections is that many aspects of the process have been changed while it was under way. We have observed that our Foundation has become more politicised, that this time around projects and languages are being pitted against each other.

In our Wiki world the notion of "so fix it" is accepted. In the mail of Jan-Bart it was clear that the board did not change the process re Danny's candidature because the process was considered to be under way. Given the many changes to the process that have happened during the process, I think it is fair to ask Danny again, WHY DO YOU STAND !!!

I am sure the answer will remain the same; because he does. It is the best answer he can give as there is no good answer for him giving the compelling arguments why he should not stand.

Thanks,
GerardM