I don’t really know if I can express to you how much learning JavaScript has meant for me. It’s given me a way to turn my search ponderings of literally decades into real things. It feels like I had two or three rooms in my brain that were empty and locked, and JavaScript kicked the doors open and punched out a few windows for good measure.

And now that ChatGPT is available, it’s like I have an endlessly-patient JavaScript teacher who doesn’t mind explaining things and is willing to try different experiments. Granted, the teacher occasionally acts like they’ve taken a healthy belt of gin (or two), but even that is a learning experience.

With the launch of GPT-4, I decided to go WAY out over my skis and take on something I’ve always wanted: a way to get specific Wikidata values at Wikipedia category level. In other words, I wanted to be able to put in a Wikipedia category and get, say, all the pages with Twitter account Wikidata. Or the Quora topic category property. Or my personal favorite, the “official website” property (good old P856.)

It’s a little rough around the edges – I probably bumped it with the skis – but I’m pleased to present Wikidata Quick Dip, at https://searchgizmos.com/wqd/ . Here’s how it works.

Step by Step With Wikidata Quick Dip

Start by pasting in the name of a Wikipedia category (or start with the default if you want) and click the search button.

After a few seconds (or longer if you went wild and chose a huge category)  you’ll get a drop-down list of all the Wikidata properties shared by at least ten percent of the pages in the category.

Choose an item from the drop-down menu. You don’t have to hit the search button again. Say you want the SoundCloud IDs for all the artists in this category. Choose that, and in a few seconds to many seconds (you and your big categories) you’ll get a list of pages with SoundCloud links along with a summary and timestamp of last change.

Select something else from the drop-down menu and the display will change. Official website is always a great choice:

Look, mom – WikiMoz!

Researchers and journalists and other people who like to gather data by the scoopful, I think you’ll like this. Here are some examples of how it can be used:

Search for Category:Women in Arizona politics and then display the pages with a C-SPAN Person ID. You’ll get a link to a C-SPAN directory of clips for several members of the category, including Kris Mayes and Cindy McCain.

Looking for a new libation? Search the Category:Types_of_beer and choose the “TasteAtlas ID” property. You’ll get links to the TasteAtlas pages, which contain additional information and sometimes drink reviews.

Researching the business end of solar energy? Search Category:Photovoltaics manufacturers and choose the Crunchbase Organization ID property.

There are over ten thousand data properties available on Wikidata, so these are only a few of many, many, MANY ways you can aggregate information by Wikipedia category using Wikidata Quick Dip.

I think most of the bugs have been squashed, but if you’ve got any ideas for improvement drop a note.