4 ms·

This is one of the best, most magical things on the Internet. SPARQL over wikidata is the closest you can feel to actual omniscience and I never truly understoo

by thom 6y ago

This is one of the best, most magical things on the Internet. SPARQL over wikidata is the closest you can feel to actual omniscience and I never truly understood the value of linked data until I played with it. Everyone should tinker with it!

2sk21 6y ago
Indeed, I have also been having fun playing around with this. I had no idea that such a service existed until I read this posting - this is what makes HN such a magical resource.
wenc 6y ago
I found a front-end to Wikidata: https://qanswer-frontend.univ-st-etienne.fr/ https://qanswer-frontend.univ-st-etienne.fr/ I tried "who was harry potter's aunt?" on it but that didn't seem to work. I tried googling the same question and Google gave me the correct answer. I think that Google, despite result skew, is pretty powerful sometimes. I asked Alexa the same question and she returned the correct answer as well.
- thom 6y ago
  That seems like a suboptimal implementation, when the info clearly exists: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3244512 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3244512 Google can be disappointing, however, when you want to ask a question few people have thought of. It would be hard to get a clear answer to "which family had the most members in Harry Potter?" etc, whereas that's a query you can write pretty naturally with a graph database, RDF or otherwise. I'd never say that I wish we just had massive triple stores and Google had never been invented, but I still maintain that linked data is exciting and expressive.
- JeanFred 6y ago
  askplatyp.us is another experimental front-end on top of WDQS − it worked with a slightly reworded question: https://askplatyp.us/?lang=en&q=Who%20is%20the%20aunt%20of%20Harry%20Potter%3F https://askplatyp.us/?lang=en&q=Who%20is%20the%20aunt%20of%2...
  - thom 6y ago
    That appears to still just be using 'relative' as a relation, not 'aunt'. You get the same results for 'cousin' etc.
nicbou 6y ago
Yep! It's mind-boggling. Wikidata is one of the most exciting projects on the internet to me.

by thom 6y ago

2sk21 6y ago

Indeed, I have also been having fun playing around with this. I had no idea that such a service existed until I read this posting - this is what makes HN such a magical resource.

wenc 6y ago

I found a front-end to Wikidata: https://qanswer-frontend.univ-st-etienne.fr/ https://qanswer-frontend.univ-st-etienne.fr/ I tried "who was harry potter's aunt?" on it but that didn't seem to work. I tried googling the same question and Google gave me the correct answer. I think that Google, despite result skew, is pretty powerful sometimes. I asked Alexa the same question and she returned the correct answer as well.

thom 6y ago
That seems like a suboptimal implementation, when the info clearly exists: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3244512 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3244512 Google can be disappointing, however, when you want to ask a question few people have thought of. It would be hard to get a clear answer to "which family had the most members in Harry Potter?" etc, whereas that's a query you can write pretty naturally with a graph database, RDF or otherwise. I'd never say that I wish we just had massive triple stores and Google had never been invented, but I still maintain that linked data is exciting and expressive.
JeanFred 6y ago
askplatyp.us is another experimental front-end on top of WDQS − it worked with a slightly reworded question: https://askplatyp.us/?lang=en&q=Who%20is%20the%20aunt%20of%20Harry%20Potter%3F https://askplatyp.us/?lang=en&q=Who%20is%20the%20aunt%20of%2...
- thom 6y ago
  That appears to still just be using 'relative' as a relation, not 'aunt'. You get the same results for 'cousin' etc.

nicbou 6y ago

Yep! It's mind-boggling. Wikidata is one of the most exciting projects on the internet to me.