Tuesday, May 21, 2013

#Wikidata has a #homonym problem

You do not solve disambiguation in Wikidata with a "disambiguation page". It cannot be done because Wikidata supports all languages and each language has different homonyms.

The obvious solution; add a description.

When description are added, you can select the right homonym among others. When descriptions are added, you know what or who the subject is. 

When descriptions are added, you are halfway towards implementing a dictionary like OmegaWiki. What OmegaWiki has in addition to Wikidata is information about the word itself; if it is a noun and when it is, what gender it has, what its plural, diminutive etc is. Another thing OmegaWiki has are verbs and other words that typically do not get a Wikipedia article.

Guess what, Wikidata has already implemented half the features of OmegaWiki. It is not as tough to add the other half.
Thanks,
      GerardM

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