[Developers] /wikipedia/en_id not giving results for redirected ids

[Brian Karlak]

On Jul 24, 2008, at 2:30 AM, Shug Boabby wrote:

> But this advice contradicts what Freebase have previously advised...
> to use the WPID instead of the Wikipedia Name. Now you're saying that
> for future proofing, only the Name can be used? I'd strongly suggest
> that Freebase store the redirected WPIDs as well as the names.

It depends on what you are trying to do.

If you are trying link back to the URL for the wikipedia entry that  
corresponds to a freebase topic, then the /wikipedia/en_id is the  
proper approach.  If you are trying to search for the freebase topic  
that corresponds to a wikipedia article that may or may not be a  
redirect, then you should use the /wikipedia/en key.

In other words, the /wikipedia/en_id key is maintained as the  
canonical reference to the wikipedia article corresponding to the  
freebase topic, while the /wikipedia/en keys are maintained as the  
comprehensive list of references from all wikipedia articles and  
redirects back to the freebase topic.  Adding the redirect WPIDs into  
the /wikipedia/en_id namespace would prevent us from having a  
canonical reference back to wikipedia, and would mess up all sorts of  
systems that rely on this.

Brian