User talk:Aaron French

Projects

• FactGrid:Women Thinking Religion

Batch Fragment to create female religious thinkers

qid,Len,Lde,Lfr,P2,P154,P131,P497
,"#","#","#",Q7,Q17,Q233641,Q234043

insert fragment in QuickStatements, fill # with the name, process as CSV input

Welcome and a note on Items

Hi Aaron, just a brief welcome and note on the titles of items as I have just merged the research item I had created and your new one Item:Q233932. The Items are just Q-Numbers (and the statements just P numbers). The title/inscription/ label is gloss on top in different languages. You can change that with the edit link on top of the header, and it will appear in the new wording throughout the database.

Double records can (and should) be merged under the idea that everything exists just once. Have fun, everything will be easy and extremely convenient, --Olaf Simons (talk) 23:01, 8 March 2021 (CET)

PS I shifted your project - as you said you would go from 1700 to 1930 - into the the 19th-century section where it will gain more attention. We can eventually place it with different images and sample queries in all the different centuries. --Olaf Simons (talk) 23:14, 8 March 2021 (CET)

Hi Olaf, great thank you! It all looks great. The explantion about items and statements is very helpful, as well. I am going to start adding new items of the female thinkers. I then want to merge them or connect them to our main project page, is that the right idea? If I cannot figure it out, I will ask you. Thanks again! Aaron French

You will link the Items which you will create with the help of sample searches to your page. The searches will generate tables, maps, network views - but first you need the items to explore.

This simple search shows you all the items you in your project

Take a look at Item:Q133 for a complex sample.

You can sign statements on talk pages with a series of four ~ signs; they are converted into a signature with date and links to your page when saving. --Olaf Simons (talk) 23:38, 8 March 2021 (CET)

Okay perfect! It is rather fun actually. I will start next on generating some items of female thinkers. Aaron French (talk) 00:04, 9 March 2021 (CET)

Morning Aaron, looks good. A few details:

• Make use of Batch Fragments (I have moved yours to this page). The convenient thing is that you can open them in all the languages of your interest in a single run (here it is German French and English). Second advantage is that you create data consistency - you make sure that all properties that are shared in the entire set are actually addressed. (I assume they will be all female and all interested in religion).
• Set external identifiers - at least to Wikipedia and Wikidata, if possible also to the GND. They are helpful information in any external processing of data which you are creating, giving the information that this is the object known in other databases under these IDs.
• State family and personal names (can be obnoxious if we have not yet created a specific item for a name you need. The batches for names are in the Batch fragments section).
• "Ritual" as philosophical orientation sounds somewhat odd. Here I would expect something like "Empirism", "German idealism", "Comtean Positivism" (can be you have to create these things in order to ink them, since you are heading into new lands.

You might like to use existing data esp. from Wikidata, which can be imported with all the dates and details, so that your work will be more in the complex stuff - here two searches (the lists are ordered by birth date but they begin with undated people)

• all female anthropologists on Wikidata
• all female philosophers on Wikidata

If these are of interest you create a search with all the details you would love to grab, feed that into a spreadsheet and then you run through the list to eliminate people you are not interested in. The remaining (and that can be several hundred can then be washed into the database with all the birth and death dates etc., plus external identifiers, notes on employing institutions and so on - which reduces mistakes and is faster in the long run. In case you plan to work with quantities. --Olaf Simons (talk) 08:33, 9 March 2021 (CET)

Perfect, thanks! Just a few more clarifying questions. How do I use the batch fragments actually? Do I create a new item, then a new quick statement, and then paste the batch fragments there and it will put in all the same features, gender, date of birth, etc., for each item?

The reason I chose ritual there is because I wanted to select atheism for religion (also sounds odd), but there was no choice for that. In such cases, do I just create a new item for atheism (for example), and then what do I put there for instance of"?

Finally, how exactly do I set the external identifiers? I was creating a new item for one of our thinkers, Jane Ellen Harrison, and then found there is already a page for her in wikidata. Is that a problem, am I making a duplicate and should just use the one already created in wikidata, or still make my own? If I did make a spreadsheet using the existing wikidata, how is that "washed" into the database, do you upload it somewhere? For now, we only have about 20-25 women we are sure about, so probably I will just be inputing them one by one for the time being. Sorry if that does not make sense! Aaron French (talk) 11:14, 9 March 2021 (CET)

Batch Fragments: Go to the grey box above, copy the code with your mouse, open Quickstaments (menue left), paste it into the input box, change # for the name and send the batch off as CSV (comma separated value) input. The software will ask you whether it can synchronise to your account - say yes. The item is then created with all the standard information already given.

I did not quite get you on atheism/religion. I would use philosophical orientation to state the frame of mind, or approach, or school of thought of a person. We also have religious affiliation (she was a Baptist, so GND, hope it is true, remove it otherwise). Atheism? create it and use it on religious affiliation (as August Comte proposed) or as a philosophical decision - as you feel fit. (The batch fragment above is in this case not the one to use - it creates a female thinker; use the open one Batch fragment which you will find in the menue.)

Wikidata items are not double records, they sit on the Wikimedia server (FactGrid is histed in Erfurt) and there is no connection between the databases other than link we should set, if there is a Wikidata record and the software we are using. (It is a misleading bug that we still get their logo on searches...)

Does it make sense to have a database outside Wikidata? I'd say yes, if you leave the Wikidata scope. Wikidata has a gouvernment of "notability"; you cannot just create people you are interested in. We are open. Wikidata is secondly not that easy going when it comes to creating odd Properties and Items for special research questions - we are experimental here. And thirdly: Wikidata will not allow you to set a research statement on their Items, a marker which you can use in order to present your work to a funding institution. We are a research site aiming at the publication of fresh and unconventional data. --Olaf Simons (talk) 11:41, 9 March 2021 (CET)

PS. If you wonder how to do things - there is a help section (to be improved by those who use the instruction - my perspective on problems might not be the same, so redefine help texts as you would have loved to find them) --Olaf Simons (talk) 11:44, 9 March 2021 (CET)

Great! Thanks for the explanations, that all makes sense. I will return to it again later tonight and work some more on it. Aaron French (talk) 12:05, 9 March 2021 (CET)

Just modified your batch slightly, since your women will not be all theologians - and since I had given some mor precision to the Religion item which we had been using so far. --Olaf Simons (talk) 23:43, 9 March 2021 (CET)

Thanks! Yes that is good. Starting to get the hang of it now too. Aaron French (talk) 23:55, 9 March 2021 (CET)

if you come across conflicting statements

just a note on a software feature: If you do come across conflicting statements, we can actually bring them both and handle the conflict openly.

Several options: set begin and end markers as qualifiers if both are true, though in succession - in case Jane Harrison moved from Baptism to Atheism.

If you can identify one information as wrong, keep it on board, set the reference that perpetuates the error under the statement and downgrade it to deprecated information with the arrows before the statement. The deprecated information will then be dropped from all further search results, but other people can still find it in the database and see why it is wrong. Use the "note" qualifier to explain decisions...

and if you have conflicting information but no way to decide just give both answers and references for both of them. You will come across varying dates and statements, and we can handle that transparently. --Olaf Simons (talk) 00:03, 10 March 2021 (CET)

Okay that makes sense, I think that will happen quite a bit actually with our project, as these female thinkers are all quite diverse and complex. I like the idea of including both, as is the case with Harrison. I will change it to show she moved from Baptism to Atheism. Thanks! Aaron French (talk) 00:07, 10 March 2021 (CET)

Theosophical society

Item:Q245443 - just created. We have loads of societies and they are interesting to track as clearly defined networks... --Olaf Simons (talk) 23:28, 10 March 2021 (CET)

Great! Thank you, yes several of the female thinkers we are including were affiliated with the theosophical society, so now I can include their membership. Aaron French (talk) 23:43, 10 March 2021 (CET)

a better property for - missing a word...

Hi Aron: your input makes me think of a property that could be more open than the present Property:P554 - something we would label as "weltanschauliche Orientierung" in German. "philosophical orientation" has too much academic philosophy in it to make it fit for statements like Theosophy, religous, esoteric. "Mindset" comes to my mind, but I would not like to put that a mindset property on people - there is too much framing in it. "Frame of thought?" Perhaps you have a good idea. --Olaf Simons (talk) 08:38, 11 March 2021 (CET)

I have called it "shared views" on Property:P300 which works well on lots of levels both with people als organisations. You can now generate items to note "notions" or stances (to be then collected with the P2+Q3 statement) of people or organisations.

I also took a look into the branch of organisations spreading with the "Theosophical society" down to the German Christengemeinschaft of 1922. Would be interesting to collect notions of these organisations and to spot the schisms... interesting to have this new field on FactGrid. --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:05, 11 March 2021 (CET)

Dear Olaf, excellent, yes that was a problem I was having. I like shared views better, that's great! Thank you for changing it. Also yes it is indeed interesting all of the various schisms that can be tracked regarding the theosophical society, of course in Germany and Central Europe through Steiner, but many more in the US as well. It would be interesting to collect all that. Also for my own (hopefully) habiliation project I would like to set up a project here something like "Constructing Religious Space," in which I will add architects from the beginning of the 20th century in Central Europe who had new ideas about sacred space and built temples, kirchen and other buildings. Masonic temples maybe as well. For that project, I will input more esoteric orders/views, etc. Would it also be possible to create such a project just for me (not with Frau Waldner) here on FactGrid? Thanks. Aaron French (talk) 23:10, 11 March 2021 (CET)

Of course. Create your own research items just for your projects, and open a section if you feel that publicity of your research would stabilise your work. That's what the open platform is made for. --Olaf Simons (talk) 23:19, 11 March 2021 (CET)

Ecstatic States / Religious ecstasy (Q245481)

sure you want to say that this is a "religious affiliation" (like belonging to a church), or a "philosophical system" like logical positivism?

Maybe it is a type of event and a practice? (And we could open a property for practices... with a good definition what to cover with such a property. --Olaf Simons (talk) 23:24, 11 March 2021 (CET)

Yes that would be better actually. Could it like "religious practices" even? The point is that these women saw somthing like dance as religious, as opposed to the offical religious affiliations. I think "religious practices" could fit. It could be: "Actions that are concieved of as religious, as opposed to religious dogmas or systems of beliefs." Aaron French (talk) 23:29, 11 March 2021 (CET)

How would it relate to spiritual practices? --Olaf Simons (talk) 23:31, 11 March 2021 (CET)

In this case, I guess it is the same thing. Could we call it "religious and spiritual practices" maybe? Religious practices are more connected to established religions, although the two frequently blur together with these female thinkers. Or just spiritual practices could work too. Aaron French (talk) 23:33, 11 March 2021 (CET)

we could but actually religious practices might be both more open (to things like giving alms) and more specific as to create the field of research (Religion). I created Property:P588 and we can improve the title and the description with statements you will generate. --Olaf Simons (talk) 23:39, 11 March 2021 (CET)

super, thanks! Aaron French (talk) 23:40, 11 March 2021 (CET)

Eine erste Netzwerkdarstellung

• Women of the research project, religious practices and shared views

inspiration --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:14, 12 March 2021 (CET)

Oh wow, this looks terrific! Thank you! I've been slammed but getting back to this now this week. I also see Frau Waldner tomorrow, and so I can show her this and we will discuss the project and the database, we may also be bringing another person aboard the project. Aaron French (talk) 23:00, 16 March 2021 (CET)