Wikidata talk:Introduction

SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 7 days. For the archive overview, see Archive/. The latest archive is located at Archive/2024.

what's the difference between Wikidata and dbpedia

I just heard about the existence of the project and am trying to figure out whether this is an improved version of dbpedia, a competitor, or complementary. If complementary, how so? Is that an appropriate topic for here or for another page? TMLutas (talk) 18:51, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

WD Phase II is very similar. Dbpedia has already defined hundreds of properties, datatypes and ontology classes, and the dbpedia people have invited Wikidata to reuse this. See meta:DBpedia and Wikidata. I think it is a petty that we have not taken the opportunity to do that, instead of definbing these properties again. Important differences are that dbPedia is not a Wikimedia project, and that Wikidata also allows users to edit the data – not only bots scraping Wikipedia. Mange01 (talk) 09:57, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

License link should be translatable

For the Norwegian translation, say, I would like to link to https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.no rather than https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ . I also find "Creative Commons 1.0" somewhat ambiguious, and would like to see it replaced with "CC0 1.0" or "Creative Commons Zero 1.0". – Danmichaelo (talk) 19:06, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Colors

Please use reds and greens that are easy to distinguish (e.g., bright green and dark red, or green:0,255,0 and red:255,0,0). I know that other shades are more fashionable, but such info graphics are hard to read for color vision deficient people.

Yellow is also an option! On screens this is easy to see, as long as it is no text. And it would be nice if graphics would be optimized for viewing on screen, before considering projectors. Yellow is a great color for screens, and much less ambiguous than using various shades of red, green, orange that are too similar.

This is a big issue with infographics in general and use of color to convey information. So it would be really helpful if Wikidata set a good example.

Thanks.  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.219.64.71 (talk • contribs).

I changed the colors in one of the info graphics (before, after) from standard red, green, blue to our own logo's red, green, blue tones (Wikimedia's colors also). As those colors probably have been inspired by our logo colors anyway, I guess that's closer to what was intended in the first place. Now the question is: Are those tones better than before? The other graphics on the page could get adjusted as well then. --YMS (talk) 13:48, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Update needed

Particularly the Wikidata:Introduction#Timeline_of_deployment_on_Wikidata: "The third phase (lists) will allow the automatic updating and translation of list articles. Planned deployment of this phase on Wikidata is in late 2013." seems like it can use an update. Also, w:Wikidata has a citation needed for the entire Phase 3, somebody knowledgeable about this could spend a few useful minutes expanding/referencing that section there. Wikipedia article, finally, seems to provide a bit more info on Phase 2 deployment which is missing from the Wikidata own entry at Wikidata:Introduction... --Piotrus (talk) 11:16, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Emphasizing Wikidata concepts

Within the scope of Wikidata, an item is not an item in a generic sense, but it is a particular technical concept. Same for statements, references and so on. These are all particular concepts/classes that have a more specific meaning than their native generic expression. In my opinion, in textual content (and especially on the introduction page), Wikidata concepts need to be emphasized. If not, new users might not understand that these words represent certain concepts and have a more special meaning. Intentionally, I had capitalized such concepts which was copy-edited by @MJ94:. No problem with removing the capitalization, concepts could also be in italics or linked always, but, in my opinion, some emphasis is necessary. Random knowledge donator (talk) 07:38, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Purpose and use of the data

After reading the introduction, I don't feel I have a sense of this project's purpose (or reason for existing) and how the data accumulated here is used by Wikimedia and external projects. I would like to see such info added. Stevietheman (talk) 14:54, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Exactly!!!Stevietheman. looks like nobody answered... My question is: WHY? There should be a section on why wikidata.Leyo- can you help,please?--Wuerzele (talk) 17:37, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Storing and maintaining the interwiki links in a central place IMO reason enough for Wikidata. Phase 2 has started, see en:Category:Templates using data from Wikidata for examples. --Leyo 22:53, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Stevietheman as I understand it, the eventual (longterm/eventualism) goal, is to have many (not all, but many) of the objective facts that are duplicated in hundreds of our projects, centralized here instead (or additionally, depending on how we're looking at it, and particularly considering prose differently than infoboxes).

For example, when the latest figures for the population of Switzerland are published, we can add one more "point in time" entry to the "population" statement at Switzerland (Q39), and mark that as the "Preferred rank", at which point all 280+ Wikipedias will have automagically updated infoboxes.

See also w:en:Category:Knowledge bases and w:en:Template:Computable knowledge for some comparable endeavours and related articles.

(Note: I might have details or syntax wrong, or be out of date; I'm still learning many of the basics, myself!) HTH. Quiddity (talk) 07:16, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and also, one other interesting avenue of exploration I know of, is list articles. See w:en:List of public art in Sylt for example, and 5 other List articles, plus numerous user-sandbox-experiments, in w:en:Category:Articles based on Wikidata. Read more about it in this Signpost section. Many interesting possibilities in the longrun, especially harnessing together content in Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource, and beyond. Quiddity (talk) 08:51, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

My point is that the introduction content doesn't fully explain the project's purpose (or reason for existing) and how the data accumulated here is used by Wikimedia and internal/external projects (nutshell description for public consumption, not esoteric details). I already had understood much of the above. What is the story behind Wikidata being started and what is it for, in simple terms? That's what I want to know in an introduction. Stevietheman (talk) 11:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

hm, I agree with these questions as well. --Sm8900 (talk) 18:27, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Tense consistense

All the other bullets in the "What does this mean" section are in the Present tense, so I suggest that

Collecting structured data. Unlike Wikimedia Commons, which collects media files, and the Wikipedias, which produce encyclopedic articles, Wikidata will collect data, in a structured form. This will allow easy reuse of that data by Wikimedia projects and third parties, and will enable computers to easily process and “understand” it.

be replaced with

Collecting structured data. Unlike Wikimedia Commons, which collects media files, and the Wikipedias, which produce encyclopedic articles, Wikidata collects data in a structured form. This allows easy reuse of that data by Wikimedia projects and third parties, and enables computers to easily process and “understand” it.

Thanks; LeoRomero (talk) 16:57, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Phases in development

Until the 'fundamental rewrite' by Random knowledge donator, there was a paragraph 'Timeline of deployment on Wikidata' with information about the phases (1. link repository 2. Infoboxes and properties 3. Lists and queries). These phases are mentioned on several other places. Also the Wikidata:News page links to this paragraph. While it can be argued that this introductory page is not the right place for this information, it should be somewhere. Bever (talk) 04:43, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Some elements not translatable

The table headings "Element", "Property" and "Value" are not translatable now. For the first two, I guess we could get them from {{int:Wikibase-entity-item}} and {{int:Wikibase-entity-property}}, but I don't know if there's a message for "Value".. Perhaps the easiest is to just annotate all three with <translate>? Danmichaelo (talk) 23:13, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Editing this page

I have some thoughts for slightly expanding this page, but I'm a bit hesitant to edit given that it is already apparently translated into so many languages. Should I feel free to "be bold" (understanding that my work might be rolled back) or is this a page where all prospective changes are best discussed in advance? - Jmabel (talk) 04:53, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Being bold is usually welcome as well but I think the latter is better here. If it's to be a greater change, you may get appropriate audiance at wD:PC. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 14:40, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Removing "There is more to come" section

Would anyone object to the removal of the "There is more to come" section? I don't think it makes so much sense at this point to emphasize future development, and the page on Meta is no longer the best place to find out about Wikidata development, I think. The mailing list isn't where the most relevant updates are provided or where most discussions are held, and the remaining data types to implement aren't particularly important. --Yair rand (talk) 17:14, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Short description in a Wikipedia article...

Does at Wikidata entry mean a short description in a Wikipedia article is not required? Best regards DynamoDegsy (talk) 15:33, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

The bullet point "Multilingual" has a problem with its wording

Multilingual. Editing, consuming, browsing, and reusing the data is fully multilingual. Data entered in any language is immediately available in all other languages. Editing in any language is possible and encouraged.

(Italic emphasis mine). Digital data cannot be "consumed". Its use by one person does not make it unavailable for anyone else – please see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Consume for more information. Please can this wording be changed? Regards, DesertPipeline (talk) 14:12, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Typos

To facilitate finding known typos, it seems better to list them as subsections (or via bullets). I was going to rename the existing section 'Typo' to this, but I decided to create a new section to avoid conflicts.  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tomasohara (talk • contribs) at 29 March 2021, 00:47 (UTC).