Sunday, January 04, 2015

#Wikidata is more like a #ball and not so much like a #pie

The value of the data in Wikidata is in its connections. From the start there are the inter language links to Wikipedia and as more statements are added, they are adding value in their own way.

Many statements are repetitive; many people are born or die on the same day. Many people go to the same school or take part in the same event. Items like these can be seen as a cluster, a ball. All of them together are an even bigger ball.

One early choice in Wikidata was to link items to external sources. This has many potentials for the future. We did experiment with comparing data. We may represent external data and not store it in Wikidata.

Through these external links, Wikidata is very much in a galaxy of data. There are clusters here and there of similar data. The value of that data is very much in our ability to represent it. From a language point of view all this data is not diverse. It is therefore our challenge to bring more language people to Wikidata not only for them to add labels but to do this in a SMART way.
Thanks,
     GerardM

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