Sunday, August 25, 2013

Presidents of #Uruguay

At #Wikidata there are "items" for all the presidents of Uruguay. However, when you want to add simple information like "start date", "preceded by", "end date" and "succeeded by" you find that it is "complicated".

This may mean that the information in Wikipedia is wrong. When you retrieve information by inferring the data from the text, the lists, the infoboxes you will get the best information as available at that time.

The problems found so far are from reading the texts are:
  • there was a civil war with two opposing Uruguayan presidents and governments
  • for a long time there was no presidential representative democratic republic
  • when both the president and the vice president are out of the country, there is an interim president
Obviously there is a solution possible for all that. What that solution should be, requires some thought. The thinking of such a solution however is important because it needs to reflect the "Neutral Point Of View" that is dear to the hearts and mind of Wikimedians. Also relevant is the consideration that similar problems exists for other countries past and present.

Issues like these do not mean that we should not mass import data. It means that we need to actively curate the data. Lessons learned should be shared with where there is contrary information.
Thanks,
       GerardM

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