Submissions/An article per day: Making a daily chronology on Wikipedia

From Wikimania 2014 • London, United Kingdom

After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2014 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this August.

Submission no. 1011
Title of the submission
An article per day: Making a daily chronology on Wikipedia
Author of the submission
Pierre-Carl Langlais
E-mail address
Special:EmailUser/Alexander Doria
Username
Alexander Doria
Country of origin
France
Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)
Université de Paris Sorbonne / CELSA
Personal homepage or blog
Hotel Wikipedia
Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

We have recently initiated some crazy project on the French Wikipedia: making an article per day. This may seem huge, but actually the data already contained in Wikipedia and online contemporary secondary sources allow to link usually about five to twenty facts to each day since the end of the XVIIIth century. I have run several tests, choosing random days where nothing special was supposed to happen and the results have been fairly conclusive — see for instance the 11th of March 1837 (in french). Hundreds of days have been created but we are still far from our top goal (about 80,000 days from the 1st of January 1800 to… today). In order to stimulate the project, I contemplate creating all the days of the First World War (whose centennial is commemorated this year).

This project serves several purposes, mainly:

  • It allows to read the history of the world in a surprising way, to see it taking it life from one day to another (as the contemporaries have seen it, actually).
  • It has greatly helped to correct chronological data mistakes (especially birth and death date inaccuracies).
  • It could be used a repository for historic facts, images or data that would not go elsewhere (for instance, reproduction of the front pages newspapers, stock exchange quotes, and so forth).

I would be glad to have the opportunity to discuss the implementation of the project on other Wikipedias. I guess Wikidata could also be used to ease the writing process and store some of the data.

Track
WikiCulture & Community
Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)
15 minutes
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
Yes, providing my grant has been accepted
Slides or further information (optional)
Special requests


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