#Wikimedia - the point of #collecting #data?

If #Wikidata is one thing, it is useful. It was useful from the start by including all the Wikipedia articles who are linked to articles in other languages. In the next phase statements were added and more and more articles were added that did not link to other articles. They were needed because they were a part in the expression of a statement. Then for all articles Wikidata items were created and still more items were created because they were needed in the statement of expressions.

There is a point to linking the articles. It enables people to read about the same subject in other languages. There is a point to adding statements to items; it enables articles to be linked to whatever. This combination enables us to report on Wikipedia in ways not yet done.

If you want to know about the gender division; currently these are the men, the women in all our projects. Since June 2014 90,850 more items became known to be women and 445,240 as men. Interesting but this information is not in a format that is "academic" or useful.  Having this information in a bar chart with regular intervals gives more insight in what we have. Using old dumps for this is one solution. Breaking the information up per Wikipedia provides even more granular information.

Providing statistics in this way is good for several reasons:

• it is public and verifiable information
• it stimulates people to add statements about gender
• it stimulates people to write about men and women
• it makes it obvious that it is Wikidata where we know these things

Thanks,

      GerardM