Sunday, November 30, 2014

#Wikimedia - #Wikidata; a recurring subject


The last Foundation Metrics meeting is kinda interesting, particularly when you are interested in #Wikidata. In his part of the meeting Erik considers the implications of Wikidata and wonders what it takes to help it lift off.

Erik wants us to change the world. Now that is a big statement. It can be done. It takes big thinking, maybe even bigger thinking or maybe no thinking at all. In the vision Erik presented, it is all about data and leveraging the data for instance in info-boxes.

Have a closer look at Reasonator, to its statistics and to these specific statistics (it takes a long time to load). What you find is probably the most easy and effective thing to do. It is allowing people to add labels in their own language. Labels leverage all Wikidata statements for a language. With those labels you can disambiguate effectively in a search. Try it in Reasonator. Now change the language and notice that effectively the automated descriptions are still there. Now do the same with search in Wikidata.. See ?

At Wikimania there was a heated discussion about the need for descriptions . The only half baked argument to keep the current descriptions was that people outside expect them. Lets not be strangers.
Thanks,
        GerardM

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