#Wikidata may support what #Wikipedia does not know

The first actual Wikidata project starts to become functional. It is interwiki links on steroids. Just one database for all the interwiki links. An API or application programming interface to acquire the relevant data. At this time it works alongside the old interwiki system and it is getting most of its updates that way.

Work is under way to make an editing interface. when this is fully functional and when Wikidata can cope with the amount of data Wikipedia will ask it to serve it will replace the existing interwikis and good riddance.

Wikipedia is not the only project that makes use of interwiki links. Wiktionary is another. There are fewer Wiktionaries than Wikipedias but languages are treated differently; the English Wiktionary alone supports entries in some 450 languages.

Now consider what happens when the links from Wiktionary and Wikipedia are joined and the translations for concepts in Wiktionary are available in Wikidata ...

Over 150 languages are added. That is exciting enough. More useful will be all the translations to languages that we already support. When a search item is entered, it can be found as it is known to Wikidata and it can be shown in red for easy editing. As the concept found is associated with existing Wikipedia articles, an article can be presented in another language.

How cool is that?
Thanks,
      GerardM