Talk:Statistical business register

Importance to WikiData

This article is of critical importance as a foundation element in the struggle to establish well reasoned "notability" requirements for company listings in WikiData, both in the short term (1-3 years) and in the longer (3-5+ years).

The work of these registrars directly impacts the quality the overall economic reporting. A sloppy and out of date statistical business register will insure that the aggregate reporting error is actually magnified, and likely to be far off the mark. High quality, detailed sampling is critical to reasonably accurate aggregate results.

Coverage here to date is a stub start at best. Too much is hidden, not documented.

It would be excellent to note actual database schema used by various countries to establish their "universe" of business entities. Only from a high quality master database can statistically valid samples be drawn. Data collection is expensive so there is an incentive to run lean. The register universe however must cover the entire GDP. It includes parent companies, subsidiaries, divisions, geo locations of major plants/warehouses/offices i.e. entity data (so they may be counted in counties/states/nations, etc.) The registrars must also be able to tease out industry data and employment role/job function/payroll data by geo location -- none of that is easy on a limited data collection budget. However the statistical business registrars have been at this for a long time and the leading ones around the world likely are very aware of best practices and where operations fall short of those.

Detailed, complete and accurate coverage here will greatly inform the WikiData company project. Plus, right here in WikiPedia it should inform economists and financial analysts. In the back of these peoples minds should be a nagging awareness - "what is the quality of the data underlying this aggregate" Rick (talk) 16:04, 3 November 2017 (UTC)