[emw]

Wikidatan here. Here's a quick comparison of Freebase and Wikidata:

Topics / items:

- Freebase: 46,476,860 [1]

- Wikidata: 12,921,731 [2]

Facts / claims:

- Freebase: 2,696,141,481 [1]

- Wikidata: 50,457,200 as of 2014-11-10 [3]

Instances of person / human:

- Freebase: 3,391,533 [4]

- Wikidata: 2,638,614 [5]

License for data

- Freebase: CC-BY [6]

- Wikidata: CC0 [7]

Data on Paul Graham:

- Freebase: http://www.freebase.com/m/017cm9

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q92650

Data on San Francisco:

- Freebase: http://www.freebase.com/m/0d6lp

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62

Data on Python:

- Freebase: http://www.freebase.com/m/05z1_

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q28865

Data on APOE / Apolipoprotein E:

- Freebase: http://www.freebase.com/m/0byv2v

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q14890468 (APOE), https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q424728 (Apolipoprotein E)

See [8] and [9] for an introduction to Wikidata. I have no notable experience with Freebase, but I've been contributing to Wikidata for about 2 years and would be happy to answer any questions I can.

[1] http://www.freebase.com/

[2] https://www.wikidata.org

[3] http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/stats.php

[4] http://www.freebase.com/people/person?instances

[5] http://tools.wmflabs.org/autolist /autolist1.html?q=claim[31:5]

[6] http://www.freebase.com/policies/tos

[7] See bottom of [2]

[8] Up and running with Wikidata: http://www.slideshare.net/_emw/up-and-running-with-wikidata

[9] Introducing Wikidata to the Linked Data Web: http://korrekt.org/papers/Wikidata-RDF-export-2014.pdf

[waldir]

Reasonator is a better way to visualize info from Wikidata:

Data on Paul Graham:

- Freebase: http://www.freebase.com/m/017cm9

- Wikidata: https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=92650

Data on San Francisco:

- Freebase: http://www.freebase.com/m/0d6lp

- Wikidata: https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=62

Data on Python:

- Freebase: http://www.freebase.com/m/05z1_

- Wikidata: https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=28865

Data on APOE / Apolipoprotein E:

- Freebase: http://www.freebase.com/m/0byv2v

- Wikidata: https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=14890468 (APOE), https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=424728 (Apolipoprotein E)

[frik]

So sad. Freebase is way ahead and more polished.

Wikidata originates from the German Wikipedia. The idea is good, but the implementation pales in comparison to Freebase (at the moment).

This is the real San Francisco Wikidata page (slow and ugly): https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62

Reasonator takes ages to load and render the content.

[emw]

There's a Wikidata UI Redesign in development [1] which should improve the default site's visual appeal.

That said, while the San Francisco Wikidata page may currently be uglier than its Freebase counterpart, it is not slower. webpagetest.org has the Wikidata page fully loaded at 8.8 s and the Freebase page 11.2 s [2, 3]. And while Reasonator is certainly dog slow (21.2 s to fully load! [4]), its San Francisco page is much more polished than the Freebase's.

[1] http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:UI_redesign_input

[2] http://www.webpagetest.org/result/141218_DR_9W4/

[3] http://www.webpagetest.org/result/141218_ZA_9WF/

[4] http://www.webpagetest.org/result/141218_6N_9WK/

[walterbell]

Will CC0 and CC-BY data remain separate, or will there be an attempt to reconcile future contributions?

[emw]

There will be an attempt to reconcile future contributions.

From Denny Vrandecic, current Google researcher working on the Google Knowledge Graph, former project director of Wikidata [1]:

"Freebase has seen a huge amount of effort go into it since it went public in 2007. It makes a lot of sense to make the results of this work available to Wikidata. But knowing Wikidata and its community a bit, it is obvious that we can not and should not simply upload Freebase data to Wikidata: Wikidata would prefer the data to be referenced to external, primary sources.

"In order to do so, Google will soon start to work on an Open Source tool which will run on Wikimedia labs and which will allow Wikidata contributors to find references for a statement and then upload the statement and the reference to Wikidata. We will release several sets of Freebase data ready for consumption by this tool under a CC0 license. This tool should also work for statements already in Wikidata without sufficient references, or for other datasets, like DBpedia and other machine extraction efforts, etc.

"To make sure we get it right, we invite you to participate in the design and development of this tool here:

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Primary_sources_tool "

[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata-l/2014-Decemb...

[frik]

"Google will soon start to work on an Open Source tool which will run on Wikimedia labs".

Hmm. Don't forget about their Knol vs. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol

And now they use Wikipedia data for their knowledge graph. If Google open sourced their knowledge graph algorithms, that would be another thing.

[david927]

I understood that there's a significant quality difference with Freebase: that there are a lot of places in Wikidata showing values where a reference should be. Is that true?

And do you have any way to contact you? (My email is in my profile.)

[emw]

From the first chart in [1], which gives Wikidata statistics for 2014-11-10:

- Total statements: 50,457,200

- Items with referenced statements: 8,188,516 (49.41%)

- Statements referenced to Wikipedia: 18,614,138 (36.89%)

- Statements referenced to other sources: 7,466,240 (14.80%)

"References" to Wikipedia are obviously frowned about, so the relevant datum here is that 14.80% of Wikidata's 50,457,200 statements have references.

I have no idea what that figure is for Freebase. Anyone know how to find what proportion of statements in Freebase are referenced?

The best way to contact me about this is to leave a note at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User_talk:Emw.

[1] http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/stats.php