Wikidata annotation tool

Annotation Tool that extracts information from the books and feed them on Wikidata
Public Url:


 * (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects#Annotation_tool_that_extracts_statements_from_books_and_feed_them_on_Wikidata)

Announcement of Proposal:


 * Announcement 1


 * Announcement 2

Name and Contact Information
Name:


 * Amanpreet Singh

Email:


 * amanpreet.iitr2013@gmail.com

IRC Nick:


 * apsdehal

Web Page / Blog / Microblog:


 * Spookout

Location:


 * Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India

Typical Working Hours:


 * 10:00- 13:00, 15:30-19:00, 22:00-03:00 ( IST ) 4:30- 7:30, 9:30-1:30, 16:30- 21:30 ( UTC )

Synopsis
Project is strongly based on belief to improve user interactivity with Wikidata and create a whole new world of data sharing and saving by creating a tool that on highlighting a statement would provide a GUI to fix its structure and then feed it to Wikidata. Wikidata is a free information base that is same for humans and machines. It centralizes access to and structurally manage data so that every piece of data is easily available and accessible. By the means of the plugin people can save their important notes and quotes directly on Wikidata hence making them more accessible to the mass.

The Need
Statements or annotations link the web data together and bind them as one entity. Items, properties and values which are worthless without their interconnections are brought to life through these statements. The tools aims at helping people create annotations as a result gluing the dataweb together, and as a result, enriching it with tremendous amount of knowledge. So the need of the project is justified in a way, that there is need to continuously link together the things and thus make this network of data more and more valuable with more and more people annotating.

Possible Mentors

 * 1) Cristian Consonni
 * 2) Andrea Zanni
 * 3) The Pundit team

Use cases

 * 1) You are at home, reading a book on Wikisource. Suppose you want to take notes of important things, you can annotate and directly feed and share important quotes and data automatically with their source to the knowledge base of Wikidata. Furthermore, the viewers of the book after you will be able to see your notes and thus saving the time. This can be done just by activating the plugin.
 * 2) Imagine a work office scenario. You are attending a presentation or seminar. An important fact or data point is shared during the presentation, e.g. your national statistical institute has just released the latest population data on their website. You can annotate it, click and it is on Wikidata.
 * 3) You are reading the news on your tablet using your browser, a new prime minister is being nominated. You can select the relevant text and insert this information in Wikidata.
 * 4) Given a statement from Wikidata (or another source), we can use this tool to mark up a reference and import that reference to Wikidata. This could help with providing references for the millions of statements (claims) that currently don't have one. So more people annotating through this tool will add more and more references to the Wikidata. So this way many claims can be converted to proper statements.

Glossary of Wikidata terms used:

 * Item: It is a page in Wikidata main namespace representing a real-life topic, concept, or subject. Items are identified by a prefixed id, or by a sitelink to an external page, or by a unique combination of multilingual label and description.


 * Properties: It is a descriptor of a value for a particular item. In other words, it is an attribute for an item.


 * Statements: is a piece of data about an item, recorded on the item's page. A statement consists of a claim (a property-value pair such as "Season: Winter" about an item, together with optional qualifiers), supported by optional references (giving the source for the claim).
 * Claim: It is simply a statement without references.
 * Value: Simply an information about item that explains something about one of its property.
 * Quantifier: It is a part of the claim that says something about the specific claim, often in a descriptive way.

The side picture explains the above glossary terms, by using an item named London.

How it will work?
I am going to create a browser plugin for this project that will offer a GUI on highlighting a sentence. This plugin will then analyze the statement using Pundit software, as a triple (subject, object, predicate), offer a change screen (that will show fetched items, properties, values from Wikidata) and then feed the statement to Wikidata through JavaScript by linking the annotations to its items. The tool will offer suggestions based on the existing properties and items on Wikidata. For the whole process, we are going to use Wikidata's regularly improving API to achieve our goal. Through this whole data I saved or searched will be shared globally, as in future viewers of the page where sentence was highlighted will be able to see the annotations.

Following schema shows how the extension will work in details:


 * Firstly, we are going to track the user using API to check if he/she is login and if not redirect to login page. User can still anonymously annotate text as usual like an anonymous user edits pages on Mediawiki.
 * I will package Pundit integrated with Wikidata vocabulary (that will be fetched from Wikidata accordingly) and selectors, and a whole new GUI (different than already available Pundit GUI) as a browser plugin and as a bookmarklet.
 * I will provide a GUI to the user so that he/she can annotate text. Note: Pundit already provides a GUI, we will alter according to our needs as most suitable.
 * Next, the interface should propose to:
 * choose a subject (i.e. an item)
 * choose a predicate (i.e.a property)
 * choose an object (i.e. data value, or statement)
 * The proposed predicated should already exist on Wikidata, if not we will present user with an interface with title:


 * 'Can't find what you are looking for? Propose a property', and then we will redirect the user to property proposal page (A page where you can propose new properties for Wikidata). After this step, till now the annotation has become a claim.


 * In the next step we will gather sources of the annotation such as gathering website url, book's name (Wikisource) and many more. If we can't find sources we will provide an interface to user to input them himself, so as to convert the claim to statement through references.
 * Pundit will analyze the annotation as subject, object and predicate, pack it as statement and then save it at Pundit server.
 * JavaScript scripts will be run to update the item's page on Wikidata with the necessary information about the statement created. This will be also be done sometimes through Wikibase API.
 * The flow will be unidirectional, that the user create annotations, save it on Pundit server, it is also synchronized with Wikidata item's page.
 * Further extensions to this project can be bidirectionality.

Tools to be used

 * 1) Pundit: Pundit is the free open source software for augmenting web pages with semantically structured annotations. I am going to use this to analyze the structure of the sentence that is annotated into subject, predicate and object. After that, JavaScript scripts will feed it with properties, items and values from Wikidata. The reason I chose Pundit is basically it is an open source software, well established and regularly maintained. In addition, creators of this beautiful software are ready to help in case I need any. Example of how Pundit works, will explain in detail the process of creating annotations by it.
 * 2) Wikibase API: I am going to use API for Wikidata for the interaction related to the latter, currently it is in stable state and is regularly maintained. I will interact with Wikidata item pages through this API. Second job this API will do is to retrieve items, values and properties from Wikidata as to present to user so he/she can create their own statements. Also the login status of the user will be checked through this API.
 * 3) Wikibase PHP API: I might be using this tool provided by addwiki sometimes in case I am unable to do a certain request through JavaScript.
 * 4) Dojo: As Pundit is build up in Dojo framework for the JavaScript, I would be writing my most of code in it.
 * 5) QUnit: I will be using QUnit Test framework provided by the jQuery foundation to test my code against many testing scenarios. This is openly available software lincesed under MIT license.
 * 6) In some cases the code may be extended from the existing external tools present at WWikimedia labs.

Required Deliverables

 * Create a plugin that would can provide function of annotating text and then feed that annotated text to Wikidata.
 * Plugin must use existing properties available from Wikidata, if not available ask for creating a new one.
 * Plugin must allow users to create items on the fly.
 * Provide references by taking source URL and quotations in considerations.
 * Show the user with the plugin activated the annotations made by previous users of an annotation source.

Optional Deliverables

 * Create a Mediawiki extension for the same and thus increasing the reach.

Details on Timeline

 * Task 1:
 * I am contributing to Mediawiki from the last year. Through the micro task. I have also setup pundit in my machine, I been also familiarized with the Wikibase API and making requests to Wikibase API through Javascript. I am regularly in contact with my mentors through a google group and we regularly do discussion on the topic and post questions in case I have doubts. We also hangout through voice calls on Google hangouts, thus making the communication more effective.


 * Task 2:
 * Since I am creating a plugin for a which can also be easily saved in bookmark, it won't take much time to implement since pundit already the functionality of packaging it in the bookmarklet, the major time will be consumed in setting up the plugin. So initial code will be based on setting up the pundit to be in synchronization with Mediawiki. In this phase the login functionality through Mediawiki will also be implemented. Login functionality will be based on the data provided by API as explained here.


 * Task 3:
 * Writing unit tests and then testing the code is essential and integral part of this project, so this will done on many stages of the project. I will be using jQuery QUnit tests to test my code, and thus this code can be regularly extended to cover unit tests


 * Task 4:
 * I have to modify the current GUI provided by the pundit and blend it into the traditional look of Mediawiki, so I will be writing CSS and JavaScript to enhance the style of the current GUI during whole this time. I will also contact Wikimedia and Wikimedia design team to get their feedback on the design.


 * Task 5:
 * Again unit tests written in QUnitTest module will test the whole code to find if anything is broken, hence improving the overall stability of the code. I any errors are found they all have to be fixed regularly during this period.


 * Task 6:
 * Now this task is related with bringing the Wikidata vocabulary from its server to the user's frontend and suggest user properties and values based on the data received. Since Wikidata API is publicly available to make request and fetch JSON data from it, so this job will be done through JavaScript AJAX request. I will be making get JSON requests to the server and in turn handle the data received with my JavaScript functions on the client and thus making pundit available the whole bunch of the Wikidata vocabulary needed. This will also take source URL and quotations from the website to add references to the statements.


 * Task 7:
 * In this task statements (annotations) made by the user will be saved on the Wikidata's page for the specific item (here item is the one present in the annotation), this will be done through the JavaScript AJAX requests to Wikidata server to edit the page. In this sequence POST requests can also be made to PHP scripts saved on other server if the task is complicated to be done through JavaScript. Also in task we will store annotations on pundit server to make sure that the further user after the one annotating can see what was annotated before them.


 * Task 8:
 * This will involve writing documentation for the JavaScript objects(represents as classes) made during the task and also adding comments to the source code, and packing up the plugin for public use.


 * Task 9:
 * Again write QUnit Tests avaliable by jQuery foundation to test the whole code and in turn fix up any bugs found that can break down the plugin.


 * Task 10:
 * Launch the plugin for the public and fix any bugs found by them by actively working on it.


 * Task 11:
 * Submitting the source code to google for final evaluation and launching the plugin officially for the use by the public, and hence finishing up the project.


 * Optional Task:
 * If the time permits I would create an extension for the plugin on Mediawiki and host up a testing scenario at Wikimedia labs, thus increasing the reach of the project.

Participation
For me, It was and will be always - Sharing is Caring. This has always helped me to get well with the Wikimedia community. I will publish all my completion reports on my blog weekly. All source code I write will be published to my Github repository and will be pushed to branch in Pundit repository also to make sure of collaboration. I always try to stay live in IRC, and am regular in replying to emails, so it helps me to blend in the community. Testing and documentation will be added to the Wikitech Mail page. I am mostly available on #mediawiki, #wikimedia-dev, #wikidata during my working hours. I usually hangout with my mentors to discuss the ideas, I always post our discussions and question on our google group which is free to everyone to join.

About Me
I am a 19 year old, second year student currently enrolled in Electrical Engineering (IV Year Course) at IIT Roorkee. I developed a passion for programming and web development in my freshman year. I am regularly contributing to Mediawiki since November 2013. I am an active member of SDSLabs at IIT Roorkee. I am currently proficient in JavaScript, PHP, Python and Node.js. I have been using Linux for the past two years and found it my initial source of inspiration for open source. I open source all my projects that I do individually so that the mass can gain something from it. I have been developing apps regularly at SDSLabs, we code late night at our lab and we all enjoy it. You can find SDSLabs github profile here. I usually work between 4:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. in weekdays and 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. in weekends, rest time is spent in usual exception of studies.

I am having summer vacations from April end to July mid, after that I will have to spend 28 hours per weeks to studies, which doesn't affect my work timings, so I think I would be able to complete my project in time and will continue working on developing it further in time once GSoC is completed. Coming from remote village in valleys of Himachal Pradesh, I love the idea of open source and think that 'Sharing is Caring' and hope that this idea will spread more through the communities like Mediawiki and projects like GSoC.

I am eagerly looking towards my project, as I selected this project because it involves the idea of sharing i.e. collaborating data and no doubt it involves my favorite language JavaScript, and also some PHP in server end. This project is in a way interesting because it aims at connecting data around the world with their sources and help people save their important data, so I am excited about this.

Past Projects

 * 1) Github Profile.
 * 2) Build web app for a local startup at IIT Roorkee, Roorkee Delivers.
 * 3) Created a code sharing website OpenCode
 * 4) A web app that makes matches on the basis of common interest between two people.
 * 5) jQuery plugin for shopping cart ( jCart ) and cookies ( jCookie ).
 * 6) Created an application for the alumnies to share their experiences at IIT Roorkee.
 * 7) Contribution to Mediawiki (Gerrit Repo).
 * 8) I have mostly worked on improving the extension Multimedia Viewer.
 * 9) I have also contributed to open source project Moodle.
 * 10) Worked on our own lab music player based on play by github in Node.js.

UI Model

 * A simple UI model under construction can be seen at this link.

Micro Task
This involves two simple tasks that are: Source code can be found at this link.
 * Showcase a simple Pundit setup webpage.
 * Make a simple webapp that uses wikidata api