Hi Lydia,

Indeed, there are many more Wikidata items than Wikipedia articles. However, the users of our mobile apps only see Wikipedia articles in our search results (at least for now), which means that they will only be able to contribute descriptions to Wikidata items for which a Wikipedia article exists.

No doubt, the description field is an important component of each Wikidata entry.  But, when there is a corresponding Wikipedia article, why not query it to provide an automatic description? This could be based on the first sentence of the article, or a subset of the first sentence, or some other kind of metadata within the article. The key is that the description would stay with the article, which would eliminate the need for duplication and synchronization.

So, in a sense, I would look at it the other way: descriptions within Wikipedia articles would be useful for Wikidata entries.

-Dmitry

On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 4:17 PM, Lydia Pintscher <lydia.pintscher@wikimedia.de> wrote:
On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 9:10 PM, Dmitry Brant <dbrant@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Hi Jane,
>
> Perhaps my comments came off as more pessimistic than I intended. Of course
> I believe in the power of crowdsourcing, and I would never want to make
> anyone feel like their contributions are being marginalized.
>
> I'll agree for now that the idea of "fully" automated descriptions leans
> more towards science fiction than reality. :)
>
> However, my whole point has more to do with the apparent duplication of
> content that seems to be happening between the first sentence of Wikipedia
> articles and the corresponding Wikidata description.  There's something
> about it that seems unnecessary.  If we can figure out a way to
> automatically extract the description from the first sentence of the
> article, it would simplify things in two ways:
>
> 1) People wouldn't need to edit Wikidata descriptions, and would instead
> focus on improving the Wikipedia article.
> 2) People who monitor changes made to articles would need to monitor only
> the article, instead of the article plus its corresponding Wikidata
> description.

There are a lot more items on Wikidata than articles on Wikipedia. And
not every language has a Wikipedia article for each item. Don't just
look at descriptions on Wikidata as something useful for Wikipedia.
They're much more than that.


Cheers
Lydia

--
Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
Product Manager for Wikidata

Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de

Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.

Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.

_______________________________________________
Mobile-l mailing list
Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l