#Wikidata - #quality and the Nansen #Refugee Award II

My objective is to add high quality data for the Nansen Refugee award to Wikidata. At this time there are 70 people and organisations registered as receivers of the award. One way of understanding quality is in bringing people closer together.

In the picture you see Mr Ruud Lubbers and Mr Akio Kanai. Mr Lubbers was the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and he is presenting the Nansen Refugee Award to Mr Kanai. The only article for Mr Kanai is in Japanese, I do not read Japanese and thanks to Wikidata and Google translate, I was able to learn that the item in Wikidata does represent the recipient of the award.

Mr Kanai and his company have provided glasses to refugees for decades. It is just one of those things people need and refugees are people.

Mr Lubbers is just one of the UN High Commissioners for Refugees. All the others are now also known to Wikidata. Because of this Mr Kanai and Mr Lubbers are easily linked through two steps of separation.

This is a work in progress :)
Thanks,
     GerardM


PS I wish Bassel was a refugee, it would be safe to discriminate him but he would be alive and well. 

#Wikidata - Tokyo University of the Arts alumni

Mr Kenji Ekuan died. He was a Japanese designer who studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts. As can be expected, he was not the only one who studied there. There are categories in several Wikipedias informing us about them. The category on the Japanese Wikipedia has includes 642 alumni and for many of them there is no label in other languages.

It is no surprise either that these people refer to many items that have a label in Japanese and not in the languages people are familiar with. The automated description for Mr Munemoto Yanagi in Dutch for instance is "kunsthistoricus (*1917); Mainichi-Kulturpreis; kind van 柳宗悦 en 柳兼子 ♂". As more labels become available in Dutch, this information becomes easier to comprehend.

With every label that is added, all the associated descriptions are improved. Every item will be easier understood in Reasonator as well. Adding labels in Reasonator will provide you with instant gratification. Every statement of that item will show the new label.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikidata - external sources

Mr Yamamura makes his living working hard at playing a game. Good luck to him. Many people are interested in the game of rugby so much so that ESPN has a website dedicated to the heroes of the game. It is where you can find all the fine details you do not find at Wikidata.

The good news is that when a new property like the "ESPN Scrum ID" is added, the relevant information ends up on the talk page of the new property. Typically it includes a link to the external source. It is not hard to use this information and make Reasonator aware of yet another external source.

When you like your Rugby, we make it easy for you to find the relevant information at ESPN as well.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Taking the measure of the catastrophe in #Japan

There is satellite data available created after the earthquakes and tsunamis. People can help with mapping the new reality on the ground.

Google is making its data available to response organisations and is also really busy to make a difference on the ground.

Thanks,
      GerardM

The need for up to date maps

Once disasters impact on island countries like Haiti or Japan, existing maps no longer reflect the reality on the ground. You hear of whole towns swept away by a tsunami but there will be hope for survivors. Survivors who need care as soon as possible if they are to survive.

Getting that care in place and on time depends on many factors and one puzzle that needs solving is how to get there. After the earth quake in Haiti, satellite pictures were made available and people from all over the world helped by creating up to date maps in OpenStreetMap for the disaster relief effort.

The value of such maps is raised when local people can use the maps. The good news is that for Japanese the localisation is already quite good. It is gratifying to see people volunteer now to work on the Japanese localisation of OpenStreetMap.

When you compare this with the localisation status for Haitian Creole, you will find that the disaster maps are still not usable in the local language. This while the effects of an earth quake in Haiti have proven to be so much more destructive. Disaster can happen again, so we would love to be prepared for wherever a disaster will strike next.
Thanks,
      GerardM

More #mobile #Wikipedia news (continued IX)

• at #translatewiki.net new localisations are being added all the time
• the latest complete localisation was entered today for Lombard
• several people from India confirmed that they share my wish for an input method for Latin script keyboards
• it would be nice to learn that the existing code can be implemented on the software that supports mobile Wikipedia
• it would be nice to have at least the same features as our commercial competition ... Hampton / Erik pretty please?

• ao-komoriuta was so gracious to work on an initial version of a mobile main page for the Japanese Wikipedia
• two columns do not work well on a mobile phone. that is one thing that should change
• it would be really cool if the usability experts of the Wikimedia Foundation helped formulate what makes for a functional good looking main page on a mobile phone.
• it would be good if our mobile offering is at least as full featured as our commercial competitor .. Erik, Hampton pretty please ??

Thanks,
     GerardM

More mobile news (continued VII)

• new mobile stats became available
• orange is a nice colour, but only orange makes disambiguation difficult

• what is expressed on the horizontal axis ?
• when you look at the details you find that Russian traffic is also quite big
• there is no mobile main page for the Japanese Wikipedia
• would love to help out but I cannot make heads or tail from the Japanese main page.. who can help out ?

Thanks,
GerardM