Thursday, July 03, 2014

#Wikipedia - Ahmed Mohamud Hayd does not even have an article

The news has it that Mr Hayd, a Somali MP and a former minister was killed by al-Shabaab. Wikipedia has no article about Mr Hayd. Wikidata has no item for Mr Hayd. There is not much about Somali members of parliament in the first place. Only six members of the Somali parliament have been categorised as such.

When sources like Wikipedia and Wikidata do not know about democracy in a country, it is safe to say that people cannot inform themselves about those countries. When Mr Hayd gets a moment of fame only when he is killed, we have to trust the BBC to get its facts right. It probably does.

With a list of all the current members of parliament, it would not be hard to create Wikidata items for all of them. Add information like date of birth, the political party they are a member of and other relevant information and, we can present this in many languages using Reasonator.

Democracy is served by having information about democratic institutions and the people involved available for people to find.
Thanks,
    GerardM

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