assignment #5, will Kent

Will Kent is an expertand very passionate on wikidata. He talks about the different tools wikidata provides and what is to come in the future. He puts an emphasis on how our feedback on wikidata is very helpful in the development and what is included on the website. There are a lot of things you can add to the site. I like the idea that we have free reign to take away but also add whatever we want to wikidata projects. This allows people to insert tutorials on how to go about wikidata. As well as it allows everyone to engage with projects which enables different people’s perspectives to be shown. This is important because someone might have already worked on a project similar to what you are doing therefore you can see how they did it. These blog posts also can spark ideas in people if they do not know what project they exactly want to work on. Having Will visit and show us wikidata was a little bit overwhelming as well as helpful. I enjoyed learning about the in’s and out’s of wikidata but it still seems confusing to me. I like how he reassured us that there are step by step directions that people have written for other people, like us, to look at and help guide them through their projects. I think his visit showed light on how easily you can connect with people abroad and impact them through the use of digital humanities and technology. Technology gives people opportunities to learn from others across the globe. Having an expert come into our class was good and I enjoyed hearing his perspective on wikidata and its complications but also how beneficial it is. Whenever I think about technology I tend to just think about how easy it is and how easy it makes things around us. But after listening to Will, it changed my perspective on just how easy it is. There is some technology that is super complex and super difficult to understand. To hear an expert say how he thinks some things are unreliable and hard to understand was eye opening. In order for it to be effective, aspects of the website and communication needs to be consistent and Will stated how a lot of the times things are not consistent. Without consistent communication things get lost in translation. One of Will’s big things was about communication on a digital platform. This relates with the second chapter of the humanities by Kathleen Fitzpatrick. Both talk about how communication is going digital and how it is beneficial.