[15:22:25] Hi, I noticed that the population data for very many towns is outdated on the various Wikipedias in different languages. While Wikidata contains population numbers for all towns I checked the data is not used. Is there a specific reason for this? [18:34:06] because nobody bothers [19:26:05] put succinctly [20:08:13] there are the one or two persons who care, but those are often too busy with something else [20:16:37] And some communities really don't like wikidata [20:56:26] hum, which could that be? (: Who does not like greatness? [22:25:14] wikidata is amazing [22:25:37] which communities don't like it? [22:33:23] ImprWikiImpr: what do you use it for? [22:34:05] rom1504: wikidata? [22:34:17] nothing, I just contribute to it [22:35:05] ok, so you're saying the tool is good to add new data? [22:37:06] well, it is useful for much more than the contributors themselves [22:37:42] yeah [22:37:56] with the added benefit of the free license [22:37:58] but you don't use it so you won't be able to tell me for what it's good then, right ? [22:38:20] not from my own experience, no [22:38:34] I don't know what wikidata is used for except research [22:38:39] oh [22:38:45] I used it a bit to build graph embeddings, that's it [22:38:51] is it actually used in wikipedia? [22:40:26] some of them use the data directly, yes. The English Wikipedia has kept its use to a minimum, while many other languages use the wikidata info in infoboxes [22:41:26] why doesn't the english wikipedia use it? [22:42:24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikidata/2018_Infobox_RfC [22:42:27] is there any good source of information / updates about wikipedia projects ? everytime I looked I only found obscure talk pages, I hope there's something better? [22:43:11] in what way? [22:44:43] ImprWikiImpr: what's the conclusion of that page ? wikidata cannot be used? [22:45:22] the idea was that information on the English Wikipedia is more reliable than Wikidata information [22:45:38] ImprWikiImpr: for example I would expect some kind of roadmap for adoption of wikidata, and some improvements of wikipedia based on it (better search etc), and then blog posts updating this [22:46:05] ImprWikiImpr: ok, sounds like wikidata failed then :( [22:46:31] however, this is not the case for smaller wikis that seldom get updates, and using the wikidata information is very useful for them [22:46:57] and Wikidata is obviously still used to link different language versions of wikipedia together [22:47:28] I wouldn't say Wikidata has failed [22:47:35] yeah but if this is the only point of wikidata, it's a seriously overkill implementation [22:48:36] Well, it's important to remember that Wikidata is a standalone thing, and not just an accompaniment to other Wikimedia projects [22:50:09] and like I said, smaller wikis DO use wikidata for their infoboxes and it has helped them have up to date info a great deal [22:50:42] but enwiki simply concluded that enwiki has more users than Wikidata and more users = more reliable info [22:51:38] I see [22:52:04] it means that enwiki contributors don't want to improve wikidata and consider text information is still better [22:52:30] who uses wikidata directly? [22:52:52] besides developers and researchers [22:53:02] the english wikipedia has never been a place that cooperates with other projects. Becoming an admin there is a big deal, unlike most wikis [22:53:06] I don't think many end user actually use it [22:54:00] I wouldn't know about those kind of details, but I would imagine some do. although Wikidata is ultimately aimed at developers and researchers [22:54:21] it's like saying not many end users use mediawiki.org [22:54:35] that's not really the purpose [22:54:39] yes, mediawiki.org is for devs [22:54:44] exactly [22:55:10] so it doesn't make a lot of sense to say it's a standalone project when comparing to enwiki [22:55:25] it means the data of wikidata is not for end users [22:55:46] I find this surprising [22:56:03] but then I'm not sure who uses the data really [22:56:31] ok some non english wiki contributors [22:57:01] but I bet they don't use it that much since they probably rely one some enwiki templates and processes [22:58:54] Well, it is designed to be data that anyone is free to use for any purpose. Considering we store data of pretty much anything of note and have nearly 89 million items, the possibilities are endless [23:03:11] I hope that some new project appears, that uses wikidata for something and justify the whole thing [23:03:30] I do agree having a knowledge base of common knowledge is useful in the absolute sense [23:04:02] in practice, without some way to use this data automatically in meaningful ways for end users, it's just theoritically useful [23:06:33] having such a thing with the help of wikipedia helps document all knowledge in a machine readable way, as opposed to in prose [23:09:29] yes [23:09:36] that's useful in theory [23:10:39] assuming that machines can use wikidata better than wikipedia [23:10:51] in practice, it's not so clear [23:11:06] for example question answering systems are very good using only text these days [23:11:17] true [23:11:30] effort to use knowledge base have worked, but using only text worked too [23:12:03] that's the thing I'm disappointed about basically [23:12:07] it would have helped if wikidata was founded earlier, but it is important to note it has only been in existence since 2012 [23:12:17] Wikipedia goes back to 2001 [23:12:56] a few years ago I really wanted to believe that knowledge bases and the semantic web were the way to go, and everything would soon be represented in meaningful ways and this was the way to automatic reasoning and better knowledge representations [23:13:28] in practice in the open web, everything is mostly text [23:13:30] and it's fine [23:13:59] big companies have much bigger knowledge graphs than wikidata, so they don't use that kind of knowledge graph [23:14:13] yeah, but I don't think this means Wikidata has failed [23:14:30] still early days, really [23:15:18] okay, I hope you're right! [23:16:55] maybe with nlp becoming more powerful, and representation learning too, we will see much more direct use cases of wikidata relating to wikipedia, like automatic fact checking [23:17:50] ImprWikiImpr: how do wikidata contributors usually work? [23:18:04] is it mostly manual how do you use lot of bots to extract data from other sources? [23:18:08] *or [23:18:16] various ways [23:18:27] sometimes we import from a Wikipedia [23:18:40] sometimes we see a new item and manually add the data [23:19:00] although I'm relatively new, and another user with more experience could explain it better than me [23:19:42] I see [23:20:28] I guess there are some efforts to compute some coverage statistics by theme / kind of entities, to focus on the part where data is sparse [23:20:38] anyway that could be interesting