[OPLIN 4cast] OPLIN 4Cast #276: Wikidata

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OPLIN 4Cast

OPLIN 4Cast #276: Wikidata
April 4th, 2012

<http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/wikimedia.jpg>It 
has been eleven years since the launch of Wikipedia changed the way 
people look for information on the Internet, and six years since the 
Wikimedia Foundation has started any new projects. Now they're back with 
"Wikidata." For many people, Wikipedia replaced the library's 
encyclopedia; will Wikidata replace the library's almanac?

    * Wikidata/Introduction
      <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/Introduction> (Wikimedia
      Meta-Wiki) "Many Wikipedia articles contain facts and connections
      to other articles that are not easily understood by a computer,
      like the population of a country or the place of birth of an
      actor. In Wikidata you will be able to enter that information in a
      way that makes it processable by the computer. This means that the
      machine can provide it in different languages, use it to create
      overviews of such data, like lists or charts, or answer questions
      that can hardly be answered automatically today."
    * Wikipedia's next big thing: Wikidata
      <http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/30/wikipedias-next-big-thing-wikidata-a-machine-readable-user-editable-database-funded-by-google-paul-allen-and-others/>,
      a machine-readable, user-editable database funded by Google, Paul
      Allen and others (TechCrunch/Sarah Perez) "The data will bring all
      the localized versions of Wikipedia on par with each other in
      terms of the basic facts they house. Today, the English, German,
      French and Dutch versions offer the most coverage, with other
      languages falling much further behind. Wikidata will also enable
      users to ask different types of questions, like /which of the
      world's ten largest cities have a female mayor?/, for example."
    * Techies team up to make Wikipedia smarter
      <http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/03/30/techies-team-up-to-make-wikipedia-smarter/>
      (Digits/Shira Ovide) "The Wikidata project hopes to link together
      each piece of information so when a Wikipedia contributor inputs
      revised facts, names and figures, this data will automatically
      update on every Wikipedia page in the world. The Wikidata backers
      said they believe the project will make Wikipedia more accurate
      and consistent across countries, and free Wikipedia contributors
      from doing basic maintenance on the encyclopedia's pages."
    * Data revolution for Wikipedia
      <http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/data-revolution-for-wikipedia-145106905.html>
      (PR Newswire) "Besides the Wikimedia projects, the data is
      expected to be beneficial for numerous external applications,
      especially for annotating and connecting data in the sciences, in
      e-Government, and for applications using data in very different
      ways. The data will be published under a free Creative Commons
      license."

*/Language fact:/*

There are more than 280 language editions of Wikipedia.
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