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Wikipedia on Wednesday followed in the footsteps of other major online servicesand rolled out its first video looking back over the events of the preceding 12 months.

Titled What did we edit in 2014?, the three-minute videoraces through a selection of Wikipedia pages created or updated over the last year. News junkies will have little trouble recognizing the majority of the events appearing in the piece, though no doubt most will findone or two surprises along the way.

Created by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and edited by long-time Wikipedia contributor Victor Grigas, the video invites viewers to revisit what you read and edited, from the FIFA World Cup to the Indian general elections, and the Ice Bucket Challenge to Ebola in West Africa.

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The foundation said the video was put together on a shoestring budget,adding that ultimately its a celebration ofall the effort that goes into building and maintaining the online encyclopedia.

Longtime Wikipedia contributor Victor Grigas edited the piece over a couple of months using freely licensed photos and videos uploaded by the global Wikipedia community.

Katherine Maher, chief communications officer for the Wikimedia Foundation, described Wikipedia as the largest collaborative knowledge project in human historymade possible by even the tiniest of contributions from people around the world, and invited everyone to enjoy the video, rediscovering2014 in the process.

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Wikipedia looks back on 2014 in its first ever annual video

Its that time of year. Everybodys putting out their year-end round-ups. Sometimes they come in the form of lists. Sometimes theyre videos. Sometimes both.

The Wikimedia Foundation is getting in on the fun this year with its first-ever annual video looking back at the year in Wikipedia edits. The Foundations Katherine Maher writes:

More than anything, it celebrates those who come to Wikipedia to learn and understand the complexity of our world, and those who edit and contribute information so that others might do the same.

In watching the video, you embark on a journey through the world and Wikipedia, revisiting what you read and edited this year. From the FIFA World Cup to the Indian general elections, and the Ice Bucket Challenge to Ebola in West Africa, we follow threads of discovery through Wikipedias vast constellation of knowledge, finding opportunities to contribute along the way. We venture from Sochi to outer space in less than three minutes.

It has a pretty Googley feel to it, doesnt it? Besides the fact that many of the subjects in it are reflective of Googles search trends for the year, the way the actual video is edited reminds me of many of the Google videos Ive seen in the past. Still, I think it will make a nice addition to the annual round-up in years to come.

Speaking of Google meets Wikimedia, Google announced this week that its shutting down its community-driven structured data offering Freebase, and will now support Wikimedias Wikidata project.

Image via Wikipedia

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Heres What 2014 Looked Like On Wikipedia

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When Google first announced the Knowlege Graph, it named Freebase as one of its primary sources of structured data. It was named as one several public sources of information, which also included Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook.

Google announced that it will be closing Freebase, and moving toward the Wikimedia Foundations Wikidata, which is described as a free linked database that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. It acts as central storage for the structured data of Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, and others.

WIkidata has simply been improving better than Freebase, so Google has decided to support that instead, and will be working to transition Freebase data over to Wikidata appropriately.

When we publicly launched Freebase back in 2007, we thought of it as a Wikipedia for structured data, So it shouldnt be surprising that weve been closely watching the Wikimedia Foundations project Wikidata] since it launched about two years ago, Googles Freebase says in a Google+ update (via Search Engine Roundtable). We believe strongly in a robust community-driven effort to collect and curate structured knowledge about the world, but we now think we can serve that goal best by supporting Wikidata theyre growing fast, have an active community, and are better-suited to lead an open collaborative knowledge base.

We should note that while Freebase has been around since 2007, its only belonged to Google since the company acquired Metaweb in 2010.

Google is helping transfer Freebase to Wikidata, and in the middle of next year, it will wind down the Freebase service as a standalone project. Theyll also launch a new API for entity search powered by Googles Knowledge Graph.

Loading Freebase into Wikidata as-is wouldnt meet the Wikidata communitys guidelines for citation and sourcing of facts while a significant portion of the facts in Freebase came from Wikipedia itself, those facts were attributed to Wikipedia and not the actual original non-Wikipedia sources, Freebase explains. So well be launching a tool for Wikidata community members to match Freebase assertions to potential citations from either Google Search or our Knowledge Vault, so these individual facts can then be properly loaded to Wikidata.

You may remember hearing about Knowledge Vault earlier this year.

Its a system of Googles, which stores information so that machines and people can read it. Its basically Googles giant database of facts. When you ask Google questions and get those direct answers, theyre likely coming from there. Rather than relying on crowdsourcing info like the Knowledge Graph, it uses an algorithm to pull info from the web, and turn it into raw data. You can get more in depth into it here.

We believe this is the best first step we can take toward becoming a constructive participant in the Wikidata community, but well look to continually evolve our role to support the goal of a comprehensive open database of common knowledge that anyone can use, Freebase says.

Link:
Google Is Shutting Down Knowledge Graph Source Freebase

BalCCon2k14 - Hrvoje Bogner - Volunteered geographic information and OpenStreetMap
Its about Wikipedia and the involvement of women in wikipedia how they and everybody else can contribute? How to write good article and why we should contribute in wikipedia? Copyrights licenses...

By: BalCCon - Balkan Computer Congress

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BalCCon2k14 - Hrvoje Bogner - Volunteered geographic information and OpenStreetMap - Video