Hoi, Importing data from Wikidata (where do you want it??) is just one application. There are so many potential applications for structured data and Wikidata implicitly covers the sum of all knowledge as we know it (in the Wikimedia projects) so there are opportunities galore. For people "not to know how to" is a given. I do not care to know about Wikipedia templates because they are freaking impossibly hard. For me the data in Wikidata has other applications. One important one is providing information when there is no Wikipedia article another will be helping children find pictures of a *YOUR FAVOURITE ANIMAL HERE* in their own language.That is my vision, motivation. Abstract language does not help motivate others.. Saying things like "I want every eight year old find pictures of a horse in their own language" may. It also jives better with what the WMF aims to achieve. Thanks, GerardM On 17 August 2014 16:45, Luca Martinelli <martinelliluca(a)gmail.com> wrote:

2014-08-17 17:00 GMT+02:00 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>: Yet, if we don't use the Wikidata data in the "freaking impossibly hard" Wikipedia templates, what is the point of Wikidata as a Wikimedia project? I remember that this project had among its first goals to help disseminate structured data on all Wikimedia projects, in order to relieve the less-crowded WMF projects of their burden in managing such data and to let their few users focus on writing/translating/expanding their articles. Now, if we don't show to people on the WMF project - even the bigger ones - that Wikidata IS useful by helping them in retrieving these data, what is the point of this project? "There are so many potential application", I know, yet THIS IS ONE OF THEM -- and in my personal and humble opinion a damn important one. -- Luca "Sannita" Martinelli http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Sannita

Ok, I got the point. What you probably need to consider is that focusing on one goal does not mean at all that we have to dismiss all the others. At least, *I* do not think so. You want to focus on research? Fine, do it. I'd like to focus on templates. That's fine too, I guess. We're both working to let Wikidata be appreciated - by separate audiences. L. Il 19/ago/2014 07:57 "Gerard Meijssen" <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> ha scritto:

Thanks for the stats, Gerard. Two thoughts: - With so many items without description I wonder why we don't have the automatic descriptions gadget enabled by default. - There are many items without statements, but not that many articles without a category --> would it be possible to have a game that suggests instance of/subclass of based on the statements of the items in the same or in the upper category? Thanks Micru On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 10:39 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com > Hoi, > I am not in research. I am into making Wikidata into a reasonable > resource. To achieve this I add gazillions of statements and I am happy > when people focus on templates. However without the data, templates that > make use of Wikidata are niche applications. Without some mature > understanding of what Wikidata is at this time concentrating on templates > is an exercise in building enabling technology. > > My point is for the "community" to have reasonable expectations. So many > people consider Wikidata to be useless. That is fine but imho it helps when > the baseline of where Wikidata is at this time is understood. > Thanks, > GerardM > > The statistics that explain this best can be found here .. > https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/stats.php?reverse > > > On 19 August 2014 10:27, Luca Martinelli <martinelliluca(a)gmail.com> >> Ok, I got the point. What you probably need to consider is that focusing >> on one goal does not mean at all that we have to dismiss all the others. At >> least, *I* do not think so. >> >> You want to focus on research? Fine, do it. I'd like to focus on >> templates. That's fine too, I guess. We're both working to let Wikidata be >> appreciated - by separate audiences. >> >> L. >> Il 19/ago/2014 07:57 "Gerard Meijssen" <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> ha >> scritto: >> >> Hoi, >>> What is the point of Wiktionary, WIkipedia, Wikispecies et al as a WMF >>> project? Like Wikidata they all help us share in the sum of all knowledge. >>> Wikidata already provides an application in being the vehicle for >>> interlanguage links. >>> >>> The low hanging fruit of Wikidata is not sharing info in templates, it >>> is in providing search results where a Wikipedia does NOT have an article. >>> It is used for this and it does have a measurable impact. It is "nice" to >>> have the ambition to share data in templates but be realistic. The quality >>> of the data in Wikidata does not merit this at this time. The "community" >>> insists on sources and frankly it is assassine to expect that in the first >>> few years it will be available near the level that some "demand". This is >>> only based on the data that is there. That is the next problem we do not >>> have enough data. We are still at the stage where we are harvesting data >>> for the first time. Harvesting big amounts, not one item at a time. >>> >>> It is important to have goals, and it is nice that at the start >>> providing data to templates was seen as an initial goal. However it will >>> not be like with Pallas Athena when she came from the head of Zeus in full >>> armour. This goal is achievable and we are making big strides in that >>> direction BUT we need smaller goals, small applications that grow our >>> content in both quality and quantity. As I wrote on my blog, we need to >>> think in terms of confidence in our data and not so much in sources. Amir >>> is finishing a tool that will allow us to compare data for "humans" in the >>> English, German and Italian Wikipedia. That will be a massive step in the >>> right direction. >>> >>> I care about Wikidata and I know that at this time those freakingly hard >>> templates are the least of our worries. More problematic is that people >>> think of Wikidata as a service product for Wikipedia and limit their >>> thinking to templates. The existing search extension with WDQ is there. It >>> works really well. It is dismissed probably because it demonstrates that >>> ALL Wikipedias cover less than 50% of the subjects known to us. We know all >>> of them because of Wikidata. >>> >>> So yeah by all means blow the horn about our aspiration of servicing >>> templates in those projects that can handle this. It is fine. It is not >>> realistic and even counter productive as an aspiration when we do not >>> appreciate the reality as we have it at this time. >>> Thanks, >>> GerardM >>> >>> >>> On 18 August 2014 14:41, Luca Martinelli <martinelliluca(a)gmail.com> >>>>> >>>> 2014-08-17 17:00 GMT+02:00 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>: >>>> > Hoi, >>>> > Importing data from Wikidata (where do you want it??) is just one >>>> > application. There are so many potential applications for structured >>>> data >>>> > and Wikidata implicitly covers the sum of all knowledge as we know it >>>> (in >>>> > the Wikimedia projects) so there are opportunities galore. >>>> > >>>> > For people "not to know how to" is a given. I do not care to know >>>> about >>>> > Wikipedia templates because they are freaking impossibly hard. >>>> >>>> Yet, if we don't use the Wikidata data in the "freaking impossibly >>>> hard" Wikipedia templates, what is the point of Wikidata as a >>>> Wikimedia project? >>>> >>>> I remember that this project had among its first goals to help >>>> disseminate structured data on all Wikimedia projects, in order to >>>> relieve the less-crowded WMF projects of their burden in managing such >>>> data and to let their few users focus on writing/translating/expanding >>>> their articles. Now, if we don't show to people on the WMF project - >>>> even the bigger ones - that Wikidata IS useful by helping them in >>>> retrieving these data, what is the point of this project? >>>> >>>> "There are so many potential application", I know, yet THIS IS ONE OF >>>> THEM -- and in my personal and humble opinion a damn important one. >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Luca "Sannita" Martinelli >>>> http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Sannita >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Wikidata-l mailing list >>>> Wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org >>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l >>>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wikidata-l mailing list >>> Wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l >>> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikidata-l mailing list >> Wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikidata-l mailing list > Wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l > > -- Etiamsi omnes, ego non

One answer would be deeper answer of autodescription into Wikidata. I don't know how to make this flexible and generic enough to make this only depedant of Wikibase model concept though. One rough and not thought throw proposition would be: associate a (mediawiki?) template to a query or a class for each language, which generates a description if an item matches the query according to the values of the properties. hen we could add an API call that uses the template. 2014-08-19 16:13 GMT+02:00 Lydia Pintscher <lydia.pintscher(a)wikimedia.de>de>:

Can we try displaying them but marking them in some way? eg/ "[German person 1885-1952]" for an automatic description, "German mechanical engineer, 1885-1952" for a human-written one - depending on how and where they're shown in the interface we could also try italicising them, using a lighter shade of text, or something else to mark them out a bit. Using square brackets is a relatively accepted marking for hypothetical or interpolated information, and would serve to indicate that this is automatically generated and could be wrong. If we want to be more aggressive about it, we could add question marks - "[German person 1885-1952?]" would make it even clearer it's provisional. Andrew. On 19 August 2014 15:13, Lydia Pintscher <lydia.pintscher(a)wikimedia.de> wrote: -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 19.08.2014 16:13, Lydia Pintscher wrote: It had been suggested recently on this list to store the autodescriptions in the data, e.g., using a robot. The question there was whether this would make future automated update too troublesome (since one would have to check if the description has been overwritten by a human in the meantime). I think this can be solved (see below). For thousands of non-described items this would be a large improvement. An important point is that there are really two kinds of "descriptions" that we should keep separate, since they have two different purposes: (1) to provide a clue for distinguishing items with the same label (2) to give a human-readable, informative summary of the data The descriptions that we want to have stored on Wikidata are there for the first purpose ("type-1 descriptions" :-). Their main virtue is to be as much to the point as possible, so you can read them quickly in a small dropdown menu etc. (short and accurate, but just enough information to clarify what we are talking about). Descriptions of the second kind are a completely different issue. They should not be stored on Wikidata (or anywhere), since they will continuously evolve. The more data you have, the better your type-2 description will get. For new kinds of data you will even have to extend the code that generates the texts. Also, these descriptions could be much longer, and indeed their "optimal" length would vary from application to application. This is why I think that it is fairly safe to import (some) type-1 descriptions without this reducing in any way the importance of type-2 descriptions. Of course even type-1 descriptions will change over time (esp. for living persons or ongoing events), but most of them should be fairly stable (cities, species, many people, ...). Since we are only interested in a very concise description for this purpose, it might be possible to see if an item has enough data yet to create an "ultimate" description (in the sense that more data would not have an effect on the concise description anyway). Magnus will know more about this. A simple, low-tech way of enabling future updates would be to store the list of imported descriptions somewhere so that future update robots can check if the description has been changed by someone in the meantime without having to consult the page history. Cheers, Markus