Wednesday, March 12, 2014

#Wikidata search and automated descriptions

Reasonator uses #Wikidata wherever possible. There is no point in improving what is already good enough. Wikidata search is good enough so the results are used in Reasonator. It is used and the results are presented with automated descriptions.

To the right is a picture of the gate of Plötzensee prison. It was quite notorious during the Nazi regime; many people were executed by beheading or otherwise. There is a Plötzensee monument, a Plötzensee neighbourhood, a Plötzensee lake and, it helps when you can find the correct Plötzensee item when you are searching for it.

When you look at the lake, you will find that someone died there. Actually he died at the prison. When you look at the neighbourhood, you will find 185 people who probably all died at the prison. For the prison itself only 116 people are known to have died there. Several of these 116 have died at two locations.


The results of a search for Plötzensee need to be different in every language if the results are to be understood. It is not obvious to everyone that a "See" is a lake and, a "Denkmal" is a monument in English. With a location it is indicated that we know "it" is somewhere but it is not known to Wikidata what "it" is.

Thanks to automated descriptions it is possible to provide clarity in what the search results are. Obviously, when rich information is available in Wikidata, the results improve.
Thanks,
       GerardM

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