ScholiaAuthorWalk-Q80 — first RDD reel (audio forgotten, AI-fixed)

[WolfgangFahl]

The first RDD reel for the nicescholia migration — see #11 for what Reel Driven Development is.

The mishap — and why it does not matter: this reel was recorded without a microphone (the standard frustration: audio forgotten), so there is no narration track. Even that is AI-fixable — reverse RDD: the narration below was inferred from a dense frame sweep (1 frame / 10 s, every frame analyzed) and is marked as hypothesis throughout. The graph walk itself is fully frame-grounded evidence.

• 2026-07-18 13:22 CEST, 3:54 min silent QuickTime screen recording
• Author aspect walk for Tim Berners-Lee (Q80)
• Arc: legacy Scholia → snapquery named parameterized queries → two live failures → nicescholia dashboards
• Artifacts: original video (web mp4) · inferred transcript · RDD.md index

Findings — grouped by tracker

a) scholia — WDscholia/scholia

• F3 Use aspect empty: the Q80 profile's Use aspect reports "This query yielded no results." (hop 5) → existing WDscholia/scholia#1591 (Use-aspect curation, missing-data), related #2780
• F4 legacy under load: toolforge Scholia announces the WDQS graph split/sunset and intermittently answers 503 (hop 1) — the announced migration, related #2769; no new issues filed to avoid duplicates

b) snapquery — WolfgangFahl/snapquery

• F1 error handling: author_list-of-publications with q=Q80 on endpoint wikidata fails with "Error: Unrecognized error format." — the error itself is unusable for diagnosis (hop 11) → filed as WolfgangFahl/snapquery#79
• F2 prefix merger not applied: the same query on wikidata-qlever-dbis fails with "Invalid SPARQL query: Prefix wdt was not registered using a PREFIX declaration" although the settings show an active prefix merger (hop 14) → filed as WolfgangFahl/snapquery#80

c) nicescholia — issues here

• The author aspect should now have a POC → filed as #13 (milestone 0.1.0)
• The dashboards of hops 15–17 are the target surfaces: Endpoint Monitor, Examples, Backends — their REST/GUI parity is FastAPI /docs has no entries #8 / REST API: /api/backends result is awkward and GUI functionality has no API counterparts #10, the named-parameterized-queries showcase is Showcase named parameterized queries (ScholiaGraphSplitPaper) #9

Graph walk (17 hops, frame-derived times)

1 — 00:00 — Scholia (legacy Toolforge) home

https://scholia.toolforge.org/ — WDQS graph-split/sunset banner pointing to the qlever.scholia.wiki mirror

2 — 00:20 — Scholia search "tim"

https://scholia.toolforge.org/ — autocomplete resolving "tim" to Wikidata items

3 — 00:30 — Tim Berners-Lee (Q80) author profile

https://scholia.toolforge.org/author/Q80 — ORCID, related researchers, aspect table of contents

4 — 00:40 — Q80 list of publications

https://scholia.toolforge.org/author/Q80 — 14 works, from RFC 1945/2068/2396/2616/3986 to Linked Data — The Story So Far

5 — 00:50 — Q80 topics-works matrix / Use / venue statistics

https://scholia.toolforge.org/author/Q80 — matrix renders; Use aspect: "This query yielded no results." (F3)

6 — 01:00 — Q80 publications p.2 / per-year chart

https://scholia.toolforge.org/author/Q80 — publications table page 2, publications-per-year chart

7 — 01:10 — snapquery Available Queries

https://snapquery.bitplan.com/ — 1033 named queries, 8 domains, 10 namespaces

8 — 01:20 — snapquery author queries (scholia domain)

https://snapquery.bitplan.com/ — domain filter + "auth": 373 named queries, the author_* aspects

9 — 01:30 — snapquery list queries

https://snapquery.bitplan.com/ — every Scholia list aspect exists as a named query

10 — 01:40 — author_list-of-publications q=Q80

https://snapquery.bitplan.com/query/scholia.toolforge.org/named_queries/author_list-of-publications — params q=Q80, endpoint wikidata, limit 200

11 — 01:50 — run failure (wikidata) — F1

"Error: Unrecognized error format."

12 — 02:10 — snapquery settings

https://snapquery.bitplan.com/settings — debug with trace; default endpoint wikidata-qlever; prefix merger "simple merger"

13 — 02:30 — endpoint switch on the named query

same named query, endpoint dropdown switched

14 — 02:40 — run failure (wikidata-qlever-dbis) — F2

"Invalid SPARQL query: Prefix wdt was not registered using a PREFIX declaration"

15 — 03:20 — nicescholia Endpoint Monitor

https://nicescholia.wikidata.dbis.rwth-aachen.de/ — legacy wikidata unresolvable, one mirror timing out, QLever family online with triple counts

16 — 03:30 — nicescholia Examples

https://nicescholia.wikidata.dbis.rwth-aachen.de/examples — 148 curated Scholia examples with status/PR columns and live check

17 — 03:50 — nicescholia Backends

https://nicescholia.wikidata.dbis.rwth-aachen.de/backends — the 4 Scholia mirrors: toolforge.org, adfreiburg-Qlever, RWTH-WDQS, RWTH-Qlever

AI-inferred narration (reverse RDD — hypothesis, not spoken words)

[00:00] This is the legacy Scholia on Toolforge — note the banner: the WDQS graph split and the sunsetting of the legacy service, with the QLever mirror as the way forward.
[00:20] Let us walk an author aspect — searching for Tim.
[00:30] Tim Berners-Lee, Q80 — the author profile with ORCID, related researchers and the aspect table of contents.
[00:40] The list of publications — fourteen works, from the early web RFCs to the Linked Data papers.
[00:50] The topics-works matrix renders — but the Use aspect yields no results: one of the gaps to fix.
[01:00] Publications per year — the aspect queries do run on the legacy backend, slowly.
[01:10] Now snapquery — our named parameterized queries middleware: over a thousand queries across eight domains.
[01:20] Filtered to the scholia.toolforge.org domain: 373 named queries — the author aspects among them.
[01:30] The list queries — every Scholia list aspect exists as a named query here.
[01:40] author_list-of-publications with parameter q equals Q80 against the wikidata endpoint.
[01:50] The run fails: Unrecognized error format — the error handling itself is the first finding.
[02:10] In the settings: debug with trace, default endpoint wikidata-qlever, and a simple prefix merger.
[02:30] Switching the endpoint for the very same named query.
[02:40] On wikidata-qlever-dbis it fails differently: Prefix wdt was not registered — the prefix merger did not inject the declarations. Second finding.
[03:20] And this is nicescholia — the endpoint monitor: legacy wikidata unresolvable, triply timing out, the QLever family online.
[03:30] The examples dashboard — 148 curated Scholia examples with their pull-request states.
[03:50] And the backends dashboard — the four Scholia mirrors where the Q80 walk should eventually run natively.