At Lydia's presentation in Cologne I talked about using persondata for
Wikidata. I guess I'm not the first & only one to think about that, but
since I'm new to the list, I thought I should share my opinion with you. In
Wikipedia (as well as in the German Wikisource, for one) there are two uses
of standardized data affiliated with persons which should be implemented in
Wikidata:
1) Persondata
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Personendaten is
implemented in a lot of Wikipedias and also widely used (first by the
German Wikipedia, then others followed). The template features Name,
Alternative Name(s), Short Description (like "Dutch Politician"), Date of
Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death, Place of Death. Somebody should write
some code to have this information drawn to Wikidata. Ask APPER (
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:APPER), he's an expert on this.
2) Authority Control or "Normdaten" (
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Normdaten): Wikipedia is listing
Authority Control Numbers from a variety of institutions. This is most
widely used on persons, but there are also corporations, events, and so on.
Again, this is implemented and used in a lot of Wikipedias but most widely
at the German Wikipedia. Since April 2012, it features the type of data (p
= Person, k = Corporation, v = Event, etc.) and some authority control
numbers, most common GND (Gemeinsame Normdatei) but also LCCN (Library of
Congress Control Number), NDL (Web NDL Authorities), and VIAF (Virtual
International Authority File). Since 2006, the German Wikipedia cooperates
with the German National Library which is working on the GND. Wikipedia has
a page where users can report errors in the GND so that the library
employees can correct them (
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PND/F).
Unfortunately, I'm no programmer and I cannot help with drawing this pile
of data to Wikidata. But I think the Wikidata staff should put this item on
their agenda.
Yours, Jonathan