Validation of chemical data on

Wikipedia

Martin A. WalkerDept. of Chemistry, SUNY Potsdam

Member of the Wikipedia Chemistry Project

Overview

• Introduction• Raising general quality in Wikipedia• Validating chemical data in Wikipedia• Recent developments in Wikipedia

Chemistry• The future?• Questions?

INTRODUCTIONWhat is Wikipedia – and what is it not?

Wikipedia is…• An encyclopedia

• A useful resource for chemistry

• Written by volunteers

• Editable by anyone• Free to be copied,

re-used• Free as in “no cost”

Wikipedia is not…• A database• A place to publish

original research• An authoritative

resource for chemistry

• Written mainly by kids, or by paid professionals

• Free to re-use without attribution

• Run by a corporation

Types of chemistry articleWIKIPROJECT CHEMISTRY• Chemical concepts• Chemical reactions & processes• ChemistsWIKIPROJECT ELEMENTS• Chemical elementsWIKIPROJECT CHEMICALS• Chemical substancesWIKIPROJECT PHARMACOLOGY• PharmaceuticalsWIKIPROJECT CELL & MOLECULAR

BIOLOGY• Molecular biology

WikiProject Chemistry

General chemistry content

Reactions & processes, concepts, chemists’ biographies, etc.

WikiProject Chemicals

• ~60 members (~20 active)• Collaborates on writing

quality articles and standards for:– developing data boxes for

articles– chemical naming, structure

drawing– article assessment

• Data validation• Collaboration with CAS

Wim Van Dorst, a Dutch member of WP:Chem since March 2005.

Most articles have a Chembox

Chembox is designed to be machine readable and “database friendly”

WikiProject Pharmacology

Most articles have a Drugbox

Traffic can be very high….

Even for specialized topics

RAISING GENERAL QUALITY IN WIKIPEDIA

WMF: Long term strategy

Expand the “virtuous circle”

Diagram by User:Randomran – Creative Commons license

Article assessment – by editors

Assessment guides article improvement priorities

Article ratings – by users

Pending changes (flagged revisions)

“Articles under PC protection are open for editing, but changes will be visible to readers who are not logged in only after being checked for obvious vandalism and clear errors.”

WikiTrust• Downloadable as an extension to

Firefox, this adds a tab above the article:

VALIDATION OF WIKIPEDIA CHEMICAL DATA

How I use the key terms

Validation =>“How I can be sure the data are correct?”

Curation = fixing errors

Content validation

• In 2008 a data validation drive was initiated for basic chemical identifiers

• Led to a collaboration with CAS, to ensure Wikipedia CAS registry nos. are correct

• Now around 3500 substances have been validated against CAS Common Chemistry, as having correct name, structure & CAS RN

• Other fields now being validated• Validated content indicated with

a check mark

CommonChemistry

• Launched in April 2009• Came about as a result of a

collaboration between CAS & Wikipedia

• Offered as a free service for CAS RNs for members of the public.

Organized by WP:Chemicals

• Moderate participation from members of WP:Pharmacology

The approach to validation• Every old version (called a RevID)

of an article is preserved (for all) for posterity, and can potentially serve as a permanent record of a validated version.

Protecting validated fields

PROBLEM: This is “the encyclopedia anyone can edit” – so anyone can change the BP of water to 200 oC.

SOLUTION: A bot patrols the pages, and watches for edits to key fields. Any dubious edits are flagged with a red X (next to the data), and logged. System developed by Dirk Beetstra (Eindhoven University of Technology). It is the only such tool on Wikipedia.

Validation protected by bot

• If anyone tries to vandalize a validated field, this will be flagged by a bot soon afterwards.– This example

received a red X 11 minutes after it was vandalized.

Validated revisionIDs

Checking structures

• IN 2008-2010, around 3000 chemical structures were informally checked against CAS Common Chemistry

• PROBLEM: Structures are loaded from an external file on Wikimedia Commons, which can be “invisibly” changed

Since fall 2010

Now the bot has been modified to watch changes to the RevID of the Wikimedia Commons structure imageA few hundred images now validated

Drugboxes

Drugboxes are patrolled by the bot, but at present WP:PHARM not active in formal validation. Most work done by Dirk Beetstra, using official lists from data sources (e.g., ChEBI).

THE FUTURE?

Validation of melting points

• Physical properties are much harder – require human validation

• Collaboration beginning with JC Bradley (Drexel) & A Lang (Oral Roberts) on MPs.

Supplementary data pages

Supplementary data pages can host MP validation sources

These pages have room to list all sources with linked refs – providing a “paper trail” to original sources

Other future developments

• New formats for content – books, for cellphones (Kiwix, Wikipock, Okawix)

• Offline versions that use quality checks and vandalism checks– for use in schools, developing countries, etc.

• More validated data fields, with “paper trails” and real-time checks

• Mashups with other sites• Integration with lab

instrumentation, lab notebooks, etc?

Acknowledgements

• Antony Williams (RSC ChemSpider)

• Dirk Beetstra (Tech Univ Eindhoven)

• User:Physchim62 and many other Wikipedians

• JC Bradley and Andrew Lang

ANY QUESTIONS?Thank you for your attention