Saturday, January 10, 2026

Hon. Erica Shafudah, Namibia's Minister of Finance and Wikimedia's sum of all know knowledge

Mrs Shafudah became Namibia's Minister of Finance on 22 March 2025 replacing Mr Ipumbu Shiimi. The German Wikipedia was aware of her consequently there was a Wikidata item but it did not have the detail that she is the current Minister of Finance of Namibia. Wikidata was only aware of Mr Shiimi and not of the other dignitaries known on a list on the English Wikipedia.

Editing Wikidata is easy enough. The English lists dates in years, English articles are often more precise.. The real time result is best observed in Reasonator.. an invaluable tool by Magnus Manske. Only one problem, it does not have an audience and it is hardly effective.

Only static lists on all Wikipedias provide a global audience. All these lists need to be updated everywhere whenever needed when we are to share the sum of all knowledge. Listeria is a tool that has the potential to do just that..  A bot may run on a Wikipedia and update when the underlying data at Wikidata changes. 

Now check out this launch page for African politicians. It includes all African countries some of its national political positions. Each line presents a Listeria list that is updated whenever an update is known to Wikidata. Most relevant is that there are links to nine African language Wikipedias. When all these Listeria lists are present on these Wikipedias, the information is available as long as the Listeriabot is active. 

We can share the sum of all lists on all our Wikipedias. The lists link to an article when there is one and links to Wikidata when it is not. Key is that the information is as up to date as we have it and therefore it supports the Wikimedia mission more effectively than our current fragmented practice.
Thanks,
      GerardM