User talk:Fedrikljone

Hey there!

I'm not sure if you speak English or not, but I wanted to reach out to you about a project I'm working on called WikiLaw. I saw your work with Rettspraksis.no and Jusleksikon.no. It would definitely mean a lot if you checked out WikiLaw.

Kindest Regards, &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 05:27, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
 * You may ask yourself... what can WikiLaw do for me? To that, I will respond that a global project (based in the United States) would not be barred from hosting Norwegian Supreme Court decisions from the years 2003 to 2007. That is because they're considered "edicts of government" here. &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 05:43, 9 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi MJL and thank you for reaching out.


 * It's good to see others who understand the importance of structuring and making legal sources available. My approach is that insight into laws and how they are practiced is fundamental to a democracy and to the rule of law. There are few countries in the world that have facilitated good solutions to provide the public with insight. I'm more concerned with what WikiLaw can do for the people of the world than what WikiLaw can do for me. With today's technology and a wiki approach, I think it's possible to achieve a lot.


 * Took a look at the project page of WikiLaw. I do not think one multilingual wiki like Wikidata is the way to go. The project should instead focus on putting together a platform, which with minor adaptations can be used as a country-specific legal information system with structured data. Then it can be organized more like Wikipedia. I'm happy to share experiences and thoughts with you/WikiLaw. Fedrikljone (talk) 16:03, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
 * The important part of doing things on a single wiki, for me, is that it allows for the law to be translatable. This page gives a rough example of what I mean to do with WikiLaw on the translation front while this and this page can give an idea for how I think acts and statutes could be structured.
 * There was a significant attempt to do things as you mentioned on a country-specific approach (well really it was language specific, but that's similar) in JurisPedia. The effect ended up being that resources were split up significantly across the several different websites. Now there are only a few JurisPedia projects left as the English and Dutch went offline.
 * I completely agree with you that the law needs to be made accessible to all in order for a healthy society to exist. That is a huge part of my drive for this project. &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 17:32, 12 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I understand the desire to make the laws translatable. I consider this a subordinate problem that can be solved later. Laws are national, and sometimes local or regional, and the first step should be to structure and publish the laws in their original language.


 * It is good that you are thinking about structuring data and understand that it may be natural to think Wikidata. I would still like to introduce another solution; use git to document changes and collaborate with Schema.org to create markups for laws and legal terms.


 * Then the data can be reused regardless of platform. Nevertheless, WikiLaw should also set up a wiki farm with a platform that is suitable as a country-specific legal information system (like Wikipedia.org). In this form, I think WikiLaw can be introduced as a new Wikimedia project. Fedrikljone (talk) 18:14, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
 * The translatability of laws is a concern that varies from country-to-country. However, not everyone lives in a location where the law is published in their language (mainly immigrants and refugees, but not exclusively). For example, despite having upwards of 51 million speakers, the Constitution of India is not published in the Bhojpuri language. That is a major accessibility problem.
 * Of course, the other benefit to translating laws would be that it could allow for the creation of a comparative law wiki.
 * The current software for my testing wiki is actually not Wikidata's Wikibase but instead Cargo (though it might change to Semantic MediaWiki. However, if we do go with your Schema.org route, then we might want to consider something similar to legislation.gov.uk's XML format. &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 20:45, 12 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I use Cargo (and PageForms) to structure case law on rettspraksis.no. These are static documents, but since laws are dynamic, a different handling is required. Therefore I propose git, which I think more states will move on to when they discover the benefits. Then the states/legislators themselves can make changes to WikiLaw's git, e.g. Github.com. Doubts whether states will take the trouble to post legislative changes on Wikidata.


 * One idea I have is to compare different versions of a law paragraph/section. This will be a very useful feature, which will be relatively easy to achieve with git's version control. Something similar to mw:Extension:RevisionSlider.


 * XML (and Schema.org) is definitely the way to go. It's the most useful format for open data and platform independent reuse.


 * There are several possibilities for translations. As of today, Google Translate probably has the largest language coverage. Since more and more language corps are being created for different languages, NLP and machine learning may be the future. Fedrikljone (talk) 21:26, 12 August 2021 (UTC)


 * One more thing... The Wikimedia Foundation has a new strategy for raising assets by providing APIs and customized datasets. Lawtech is growing rapidly and legal sources have many uses, some of which we have probably not yet thought about. For WMF, WikiLaw can become an important source of revenue. Fedrikljone (talk) 21:47, 12 August 2021 (UTC)