In this week's "Technology report", we look at how the growth of Wikidata can benefit Wikipedia. Gerard Meijssen is a highly active contributor and frequent blogger about Wikidata. We asked him to share his thoughts on how the new project benefits Wikipedia:
As you are reading the Signpost, you are probably a Wikipedia editor and thus probably subscribe to the idea that information should be shared widely. The good news is that Wikidata is great for this type of sharing. Information is being added to Wikidata from multiple sources, including other Wikipedias—and yes, that does include information that is not currently available on the English Wikipedia. When an infobox gets information from Wikidata, it can be updated with enhanced information about the subject from a variety of sources. Different types of information can be added, such as geographic data or information about people's alma mater or date of birth. What happens when information is updated from Wikidata? Yes, your watchlist will be triggered; and yes, the change will appear in recent changes.
Articles in many Wikipedias now consist of templates populated with data served from Wikidata. In a way, such articles are the ultimate stubs; as more information becomes available in Wikidata, that information automatically becomes a part of each of these articles. The information served to these stub articles is often a stub in itself. I found, for example, that the Wikidata item for Dan Quayle does not indicate that he was ever Vice President of the United States. This is probably true for almost all Vice Presidents of the United States, but it only takes a few edits to add this information and it instantly becomes available to all projects that make use of Wikidata.
Discuss this story
I'm surprised there didn't appear to be a link to the project before the one I just added.--Rockfang (talk) 09:41, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Visual Editor
I have a new-found respect for VE after watching that video. That's a lot of stuff they have to deal with! — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 10:02, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WikiData and vandalism
I have long wondered how vandalism is fought at wikidata. Christian75 (talk) 14:48, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Once you start talking about the effects of vandalism on Wikidata-client integration, the big game-changer is the Watchlist feature: This means that if you're monitoring an article for vandalism, you don't have to worry about someone being able to sneak by you by doing it on Wikidata. Of course, Wikipedia isn't the only site that can use Wikidata, but vandalism is just something other products will have to factor in to their designs. For instance, an effective Wikidata AI would probably have to have some sort of "report error" option. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 20:05, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikidata proposal
I have been talking with an economics student - @Mcnabber091: - who has put a lot of effort into planning how to integrate huge amounts of economic data into Wikipedia articles through Wikidata or otherwise. He drafted a proposal at the new Idea Lab on meta - meta:Grants:IdeaLab/Global_Economic_Map. I would love to see World Bank databases well integrated into Wikipedia, especially since that organization has recently made a commitment to make all their publications Creative Commons licensed and since access to economic data is, I feel, fundamental to better citizenship. If anyone would like to review or comment on a proposal for a Wikidata project then your comments would be welcome at IdeaLab for this. Also, people should check out Idea Lab proposals in general and make their own proposals. meta:Grants:IdeaLab Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:34, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
An article opposing the transformation of knowledge into data
See User:Riggr Mortis. Thought provoking. --Surturz (talk) 22:28, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Should we find a better venue? As for commercial exploitation of free data, perhaps a bit of vice versa can be done. Bing Maps has a dozen or more apps, covering such topics as roadside sculptures, parking spaces, and traffic cams for travelers. These serve some of the purposes that would be served by a privately made layer for Google Maps. So, make a Wikimedia app for all Wikipedia articles about anything having a location, one for all the monument list articles that show coords, and one for tagged Commons photos? Or one for all the above as the user selects? It won't work nicely on my Android phone as Google Maps does, thus can't be a live photo target guide in the field, but it would be pleasant and useful on the home screen. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:33, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]