Wednesday, April 19, 2017

#Wikidata user stories - the sum of all #knowledge


Map showing all places English Wikipedia covers


Map showing all places GeoNames covers

They say "a picture paints a thousand words". There is no argument; English Wikipedia covers only so much. With such a lack of coverage it is impossible to understand what is missing and its relevance particularly to people who do not read English.

LSJbot has created lots of articles for the places GeoNames knows about in several Wikipedias. As a consequence through the backdoor much of the missing information enters Wikidata. There have been some rumblings among Wikidatans that the GeoNames data is not perfect.. But hey, let's make "Be bold", a Wikipedia quality a Wikidata quality as well.

For many Wikipedians, the notion of bot generated articles is an anathema. For others the fact that there is so much that we do not cover is as problematic. The good news is that more information in Wikidata will enable us to predict what is lacking in content. We only need to acknowledge that Wikipedia is not the sum of all knowledge.. yet.
Thanks,
      GerardM

No comments: