Pablo Neruda, a #poet and #politician from #Chile

#Wikidata has a new feature; #Commons can now be linked as well as Wikipedia and Wikivoyage. It is a first step in a process that will  get the information that exists about all the 18,599,261 freely usable media files in a more usable format.  

The most obvious problem with all those media files is that it is hard to find to find anything. Another is that you have to know English and, it is not possible to easily find all the pictures of famous photographers.

Anyway, I experimented with Pablo Neruda because there was something about him on Facebook today. I added the most relevant link on Commons for him and then I checked out the other information as well. I qualified that his Nobel price was given in 1971. From the article I learned that he was a diplomat and a politician as well as a poet. I added the political party he was a member of. 

Someone as multi faceted as Pablo Neruda deserves good coverage on Wikidata. It is known for instance that he had two spouses and at least one child. Currently there is no way to indicate this without the creation of more Wikidata items. They may not be notable in their own right but given their association with Pablo Neruda they may be.. What do you think?
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Unicode #CLDR How to fix a wrong name

One of the languages in the Incubator is Mapudungun. It is spoken in Chile and Argentina and many of the Mapuche people are offended by the English name used for their language. The result is that they refuse to have anything to do with the effort to have a Wikipedia for their language.

The Wikipedia article on the Mapuche language mentions the name that should not be used and it states: "The latter was the name given to the Mapuche by the Spaniards but nowadays both the Mapuche and others avoid this usage". The question is; why does it say Araucanian, where does it come from and how can it be fixed.

MediaWiki uses the CLDR for such data and with some digging the record that has Araucanian can be found. The ISO-639 standard does not have it as its name so it can be changed. The next question is, who is going to do this. There are several issues:

• the CLDR has only windows of opportunity when the data can be changed
• actually changing things at the CLDR is an "experience"
• we do not have anyone volunteering to join the language support team for English
• we do need this change to be in the CLDR for this issue to go away

Thanks,

      GerardM

Good news from #Chile

Many tv networks bring the news that the miners who have been trapped are coming out from underground.

Freely licensed :)

It makes for moving stories, it makes for intrusive press attention and the Chilean government is doing a great job at telling the news and limiting the intrusion. There is one video camera, probably one photographer and all their work is shared with everyone who is interested.

Their work is available under a CC-by-sa license.

Other good Chilean news is hidden in a TED presentation about the earthquake in Haiti. The Chilean earthquake was 500 times stronger and the limited amount of deaths is attributed to construction methods that prevent damage.

Such good news exists because the Chileans make it happen.
Thanks,
        GerardM