Freebase / DBpedia / wikidata.org -- differences

Question

I'm looking to enhance several "objects" in my application with human-readable data. To that end, I've seen Freebase, DBpedia and wikidata.org, and am currently working with Freebase. I can't help but wonder, though, what I am missing.

So: what's the difference? Specifically, what is the coverage difference, and what is the difference in terms of data provided for the most commonly-viewed Wikipedia articles types (such as "Person", "Place", "Artist", "Album", etc.).

Workbook

Answer 1

This is all just my personal opinion, but ...

Wikidata is new, so it's coverage is going to be much less than the others in the immediate term, but it's got a good shot at being the go-to source in the future.

Freebase includes MusicBrainz data which is not in Wikipedia, so it will have much better coverage of albums, tracks, and to a certain degree artists. The other domains where Freebase is notably stronger in coverage is Film and Books/Authors, although the quality of the latter can be spotty.

DBpedia is more aggressive about including stuff, so for people, etc which have Wikipedia pages it's somewhat more likely to have them typed as Person, etc, whereas they could be untyped (ie only typed /common/topic) in Freebase. The flip side of this is that the people who fall into this category are those who are less likely to be viewed.

Krigsman

As of 2015, Freebase can basically be considered to be deprecated in favor of wikidata. This freebase posting explains more : plus.google.com/109936836907132434202/posts/bu3z2wVqcQc – Shaina

ok, Freebase is deprecated, we have only Wikidata and DBpedia. Which should I choose for getting Wikipedia data? – Scarce

@Tom Morris -- do you maybe have a source backing up your statement about the better coverage of certain domains and the worse quality of others in comparison to DBpedia? – Kukri

@Kukri I don't have a citable source at my fingertips, although you may find some discussion in some of the survey papers that talk about multiple knowledge bases. You can get a rough idea by looking at counts of entities & facts by domain, although that doesn't cover the quality aspect. No one has ever disagreed with the assertion if that counts for anything. It's all moot though since Freebase is gone. Your stuck with Wikidata, for better or worse. – Krigsman

@Alex I'd lean towards Wikidata over DBpedia for most things, but they have slightly different characteristics & schemas, so I'd look at both to see which fits best for your intended application. – Krigsman

@TomMorris thanks. I was more interested in the quality aspect though which I wanted to quote and cite in my work. It's not super important though, just a nice-to-have. If I come across a relevant study, I will post it here :) – Kukri

Freebase.com was officially shut down on 2 May 2016. – Trumpetweed