[Geowanking] RDF and Wikitravel and a vocabulary for places

[Laurence Penney]

Jens Frank wrote:
> One note regarding Wikipedia article IDs: They are not stable. They can
> change. While this is unlikely to happen for e.g. London, it happens
> from time to time for smaller places.

True - it would be a good idea to check the age and history of an ID 
before using it. And perhaps checking back every now and then to see if 
it's been moved. Wiki redirects are a useful way to keep alternative IDs 
pointing to the same place, so one would typically just check if the 
page is now a disambiguation page.

>>>>* more translations of placenames
>>>I'm not sure that matters, either.
>>How about an Indonesian user adding material about a small Indonesian 
>>town in his own language? If there's more traffic on the Wikipedia page, 
>>then it's more likely it'll hook in via the multi-language mechanisms, 
>>and you'll be able to see his photos and read his text (though maybe not 
>>read it). The choice here depends on traffic and number of languages per 
>>typical page, among other things.
> 
>  
> Our experience is that only a small percentage of articles is
> translated. Users apparently prefer to write their "own" articles
> instead of translating an existing one.

I'm not talking about articles being translated, but IDs. The IDs 
"en.../London" and "fr.../Londres" refer to the same thing in the real 
world. From a semantic point of view the two IDs are equivalent, making 
things easy for French and English developers.

-- Laurence