Monday, August 25, 2014

#Wikimedia - "Share in the sum of all available knowledge"

When we are to focus on the available knowledge we have to share, statistics are key. They cut the crap and focus on numbers. Given that information can be made out of data, knowing how much additional information is available that is easily understood by people who can read English is relevant. Two reports are relevant; one shows the number of links in English and, the other shows the number of labels in English [1]

At this time there are 757,967 items with an English label and without an article. This is 4,7% of the total number of items Wikidata holds. At the same time 58% of the number of items do not have a label in English.

Not having a label does not mean that we cannot provide meaningful information. The name of a Dutch or Spanish person is for instance perfectly understood; it is typically written exactly the same in English. Reasonator understands this and always presents a label anyway.

It is fairly easy to start sharing this "missing" information. It is already done in many Wikipedias. The suggestion to share more information has been put asked on all Wikipedias and  several "communities" do not think it is a good idea. In effect they prefer an inferior product providing a subset of the information that should be available to all our readers.
Thanks,
      GerardM

[1] it shows the numbers for other languages as well and, the statistics are near real time. It takes a minute for them to be presented to you.

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