Wikidata makes Wikipedia a database. Let the fun begin

Aliens have invaded! They threaten to destroy the Earth, unless we can answer a simple question: What are the ten largest cities on the planet with female mayors? Where would you even begin to answer that question? Back in the pre-Web era, you’d visit the information desk in the library, summon the reference librarian, pull …

[Epobirs]

Isn't this what Wolfram Alpha is already supposed to have done?

[Dan 55]

Just what I was thinking as I read the article.

[Ole Juul]

The mind boggles

Sorting countries by average temperature.

Novels by number of words.

Great composers by shoe size.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The mind boggles

Potential for lots of interesting applications, but expect also to see lots more of automatically generated "You won't believe the shameful secret of the top ten celebrities" clickbait listicles/spam/annoying ads :-(

[David Pollard]

Re: The mind boggles

The image this plethora of 'facts' brought to my mind was of Stephen Fry clones bouncing out of the screen like the Duracell bunny, armed with a never-ending series of clips from an army of automatic elves.

[PleebSmasher]

Re: The mind boggles

Machine elves?

[I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects]

Re: The mind boggles

I think the preferred term is second levelves or mechanicelves

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: The mind boggles

"You won't believe the shameful secret of the top ten celebrities" clickbait listicles/spam/annoying ads

Please don't give the El Reg editorial team ideas.

[Fraggle850]

Another step on the road to self-awareness for Skynet

All that history and geopolitical information should help the first general AIs to make their minds up regarding the best way to manage their 'human problem'. We should help the process further by pointing our primitive narrow AIs at wikidata just to give the first general AI a bit of a head start.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Another step on the road to self-awareness for Skynet

however, if it takes at face value that decimal point entered by a piece of wetware, it might produce a micro-armageddon instead and then - humanity saved, terminator 16 the human factor due to be released, etc.

[Fraggle850]

Re: Another step on the road to self-awareness for Skynet

RoboSwat via malicious Wikipedia edit? John Connor's new mission: delete his Wikipedia entry before skynet becomes self-aware.

[Anonymous Coward]

Skynet vs Trump

It's a tricky choice...

[Mark 85]

Re: Skynet vs Trump

Bring on the robots...

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: Another step on the road to self-awareness for Skynet

Is that general AI or General AI?

[graeme leggett]

B5

Coincidence of course but was listening to a podcast reviewing Babylon 5 episode "A Day in the Strife" which has a plot of alien machine threatens to destroy protagonists unless they can show advanced knowledge.

In actuality the probe is looking for evidence of advanced civilisation so that it can blow it up and remove a possible threat.

I mention this because wikidata is the fragile bit, it's only as good as the data sucked from Wikipedia(s) - the encylopedia anyone can edit! - and with previous plans to feed wikidata into Wikipedia, you could be looking at a positive feedback loop for errors which might just blow up in our face.

[Andrew Orlowski]

Earlier coverage...

We've covered this already. Interested readers (and Mark Pesce) himself might be interested to know the problems with Wikidata:

"Unsourced, unreliable, and in your face forever: Wikidata, the future of online nonsense"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/08/wikidata_special_report/

There are two related problems:

1. citogenesis https://xkcd.com/978/

2. the inability to find a source or a citation for a "fact"

So WD may be circular, but not a very "virtuous circle".

[Warm Braw]

Re: Earlier coverage...

Mark Pesce himself might be interested to know

I must praise El Reg for its transparency - most publications simply thrash out their editorial policy behind closed doors...

[lurker]

Re: Earlier coverage...

Everyone knows wikipedia is not perfect. However I'd be interested to hear of an alternative online and free repository of information which is better. ("Citations needed").

Let's face it, it's easy to criticise, and harder to 'do'; a fact which generations of mediocre middle management have turned into careers.

[nijam]

Re: Earlier coverage...

Although Wikipedia is an easy target, it's naive to believe that many other sources of that scale are any more reliable.

[Tom 64]

At least its mostly opt-in

As opposed to google which takes the we'll-collect-all-your-data-for-you approach.

[Gene Cash]

Considering the source...

I wonder just how many SQL injection issues are running around in there under the hood.

I guess we'll find out soon.

[Graham Marsden]

Arthur C Clarke got there first...

"In his student days, he had won several retrieval championships, racing against the clock while digging out obscure items of information on lists prepared by ingeniously sadistic judges. ("What was the rainfall in the capital of the world's smallest national state on the day when the second largest number of home runs was scored in college baseball?" was one that he recalled with particular affection.)"

- The Fountains of Paradise

[Adair]

On the widely attested assertion...

that 90% of everything* is crap; we must assume that Wikipedia upholds that glorious assumption until compelling evidence can be produced reliably demonstrating something different.

* 'everything' being generally understood to be 'everything produced by human beings'.

[Stevie]

Bah!

So we can rapidly access and cross index pages of blither (see wikipedia page on mechanical stress), impenetrable technobabble (see wikipedia page on, say, transendental numbers), "creative writing" (see wikipedia page on Long Island Railroad) and pokemon?

Fab.

[The Dude]

GIGO

'nuf said.

[John Deeb]

Semantics of a wrong world view

And just like the "semantic web" this will happen as well almost but in the end not really. It's not a question of tools, it's about people and the completeness/exactness problem. For fuzzy information where the existence of your planet normally does not depend on -- just a query from a student, a bragger, a tourist -- Wikistuff will, structured or not, provide your round and about, largely trivial answers. But the moment a more thorough and complex question will be launched, which aliens could be expected to do ("average wingspeed of swallows") it all breaks down very quickly unless everyone, all elements of the whole scope of the subject matter of the question without exception, will have to submit enough data to the automated gatherers to be able to distill a reliable answer each and every time. Mind you, nobody wants a database returning slightly different replies on exact queries without explanation. Well, perhaps you don't care but people with serious questions normally do.

Which brings me to the main point: Wikidata is not a serious project at all but just another attempt to get lost in ones own semantic web of lies about life. Good luck! And yes, I've been part of better funded attempts to achieve more or less the same result but the reasons these projects always failed so far were strangely denied by many (but not all) during evaluations. Rarely anyone understood why the idea is fundamentally flawed because if they did, they would probably have to take on a different world view altogether.