Thursday, October 31, 2013

#Gapminder, the #Ignorance project

When the aim is to share in the sum of all knowledge, it seems obvious that ignorance is the ultimate enemy that is to be defeated. To defeat ignorance you have to get the facts straight.

Gapminder and Hans Rosling are well known for bringing an insight based on published facts, statistics and visualisation. The presentations are world class and the next insight they are seeking is the ignorance people have about our world.

It is not to gloat but to bring home the message that we do not know basic information about our world. With such an attitude you want to do better and bringing attention to ignorance implies that you want to ensure that people are better informed. Informing or sharing the sum of all knowledge is what the Wikimedia Foundation does best in its projects.

By covering 280+ languages most people who can read and have access to the Internet can be reached. It is "just" a matter of making this information available to all of them on a platform they use. Wikipedia is that platform and Wikidata is where the data should get a home.

There are two issues stopping us for now. Wikidata does not yet support the property type "value" and, we do not have the visualisation tools yet. Both can be helped, support for the property value is in the pipe line. Seeking cooperation with Gapminder seems an obvious thing to do.
Thanks,
      GerardM

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