A Red&Blue Wikibase disambiguation on the English Wikipedia

Mark Edward Hay is an American marine ecologist. There is a Wikipedia article about him in two languages and there is an article in Wikispecies. Consequently there is an item in Wikidata.

In a template it says: "[[Lowell Thomas Award]] (2015)". The link it a redirect to [[Lowell Thomas]] the man the award is named after. This is accepted practice in Wikipedia and it is not a problem. The redirect page has 23 links to articles mostly of people who received the same award.

With a Red&Blue Wikibase for the English Wikipedia, it will be possible to associate a relation with the award. This could fit in a template and additional red links can be added based on the source. 

When a Wikipedia adds new links, it is done by typing in the name of an potential article. Given that people who received an award are notable, consequently new blue links are highly likely to occur. New red links are entered in a template so there is this implied relation. 

At Wikidata an item for the Lowell Thomas award was recently added because of Mr Hay. It currently only refers to one recipient; Mr Hay. The 23 relations known at the en:red&blue are more than welcome to be added to Wikidata. Red links are more tricky as Wikidata is a superset of data of all the Wikipedias  articles of all Wikipedia and then some. 

So when Wikidata already knows about a recipient, it can make a red Wikibase link blue. When any Wikipedia adds the Lowell Thomas Award as a link, all the information can be populated from Wikidata making it much easier to have sanity checks indicating where data may be right or wrong..

• Hidden data in redirection articles are given an additional use
• Data available in multiple Wikipedias is actually shared making knowledge more complete
• Data only available in one Wikipedia becomes more generally available

So what is not to like?

Thanks,

      GerardM