The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
There are two points discussed here and while the line between them is not entirely clear, there is nevertheless agreement that:
— Coren (talk) 19:21, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
Wikidata's Phase 2 deployment to English Wikipedia will occur on April 22, 2013; it has already occurred on 11 projects, and will be deployed on all other Wikipedias April 24. We need to think about if or how we will make use of the work of this sister project and how we want to interact with it now, and in the future. It should be noted, as well, that once Phase 2 deployment takes place, it will be technically possible for editors to use Wikidata's data anywhere in an article, not just the infobox; only the project's social conventions will determine whether or not any use of Wikidata's data within article text or in infoboxes is acceptable. - Risker ( talk) 07:39, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Wikidata is a new Wikimedia project whose objective is to be "a free knowledge base that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike...[I]t centralizes access to and management of structured data, such as interwiki references and statistical information." Essentially, it is an editable database.
Phase 1 of the Wikidata implementation is now in progress; its purpose is to manage interwiki links for articles. This implementation started on English Wikipedia in early March 2013; users may have noticed that bots made these changes on article pages they watch. At present, if it is necessary to modify any interwiki links that are already present, the change must be done on the Wikidata site, and should not be done on English Wikipedia.
The Phase 2 deployment of Wikidata is intended to permit editors to utilize the data stored in Wikidata when editing articles, in particular in completing the data fields for infoboxes. Editors and bots are currently adding data from articles and other sources to Wikidata. The long-range goal is that this data will be centrally stored on Wikidata, basically offering for structured data what Commons offers for multimedia files. This data can be used by any entity (including but not limited to Wikimedia projects). Any changes to the data would be done on Wikidata, thus permitting one edit to modify the content of a particular data statement wherever it is being used. Eventually, there is a plan to make this editing accessible directly on Wikipedia.
Phase 3 is intended to promote the use of Wikidata in list articles, and is scheduled to take place in mid- to late 2013.
Data is entered by editors and bots. Some bots extract data from Wikipedia infoboxes, categories and articles. Each article (" item" in Wikidata terminology) has a corresponding page on Wikidata, where the data resides. No alterations are made to Wikipedia when data is transferred from Wikipedia to Wikidata. Many experienced Wikipedians from dozens of projects are assisting in the development of Wikidata's database.
Data collection is in its infancy: many "items" (articles) have no data statements at all (only the list of interwiki links), and some have a few data statements but not all the information that is normally seen in a populated infobox. This will change as more information is transferred from the Wikipedias. Of note, a non-neglible number of title/subject conflicts have been identified during Phase I (interwiki links), not all of them easily resolvable. The Wikidata community is working out how to address these issues through requests for comment and other policy development, as is appropriate for a new project doing new things. Because most Wikidata volunteers come with extensive experience on one or more Wikimedia projects, Wikidata is considerably further along in its development than any other projects were only seven months after their first users were registered.
Reference sources found in the original Wikipedia are not able to be transferred to Wikidata at this time; several of the data types required to properly format a reference (e.g., dates, page numbers) are not available on Wikidata now (although this is an objective for the future). Some bots are adding "imported from _ Wikipedia" as the source of the information.
No. Even when the Wikidata extension is deployed, no Wikipedia project is required to use data from Wikidata anywhere in their project. It is a decision to be made by each editing community. The Wikipedias that decide to use Wikidata can determine how they want to use it. The decision is ours to make. Different options are discussed below.
Feedback on Wikidata is very welcome.
Option # | Option Description | Discussion |
---|---|---|
1 | Do not use Wikidata anywhere at this time on English Wikipedia. | Even if a Wikiproject or local editing community would like to use Wikidata data for certain use cases (e.g. ISBN or IMDB numbers, or the links to Commons), it is not allowed to use Wikidata anywhere. The community can revisit the use of Wikidata at a future date when it is more developed. No change to our project. |
2 | Test/experiment with Wikidata in a different namespace or as a subpage to an article (like Wikipedia:Wikidata/Wikidata Sandbox) | This permits interested editors to try out the features of Wikidata and test how it interacts with English Wikipedia. Does not affect "live" article content. (This requires that the given page also has its own item in Wikidata, from where the data is being pulled in.) |
3 | Permit use of Wikidata for selected infobox fields on specific articles with editor consensus. (Specifically, do not change the infobox template, only insert the Wikidata "template" in the field parameter.) i.e. in the template call in the article make a call to Wikidata and give the result to the template. | Wikidata would be integrated in a very limited way, only with local editorial consensus, and can be reversed easily on that specific article. Some change in our project: edits to all affected infobox fields would require editors to go to a different site, with a different interface. Data would be shared with other Wikipedia projects. Wikidata would be called in the article namespace directly, but only as a parameter for a template. Template calls get more complicated in the article namespace. |
4 | Modify existing infoboxes to permit Wikidata inclusion when there is no existing English Wikipedia data for a specific field in the infobox. | Modifies only a selected field, and only when there is no existing data in that field. As is currently possible, any field in an infobox can be removed if it is not appropriate for an article, including fields that use Wikidata. Modification to any Wikidata content in the field could be done either centrally at Wikidata, or by adding information to that field locally, which would override the data from Wikidata. Some change in our project: edits to all affected infobox fields would require editors to go to a different site, with a different interface, or to add the data locally to override Wikidata. |
5 | Modify one or more existing infoboxes to require Wikidata inclusion for specific fields in the infobox. | Modifies the selected field. As is currently possible, any field in an infobox can be removed if it is not appropriate for an article, including fields that use Wikidata. All modification of the content of the field would have to be done at Wikidata. Significant change in our project: edits to all affected infobox fields would require editors to go to a different site, with a different interface. |
Option # | Option Description | Discussion |
---|---|---|
1 | Do not use Wikidata in article text on English Wikipedia. | The community can revisit the use of Wikidata at a future date when it is more developed. No change to our project. |
2 | Test/experiment with Wikidata in a different namespace or as a subpage to an article | This permits interested editors to try out the features of Wikidata and test how it interacts with English Wikipedia. Those who participate would be encouraged to provide feedback to help Wikidata improve. Does not affect "live" article content. (This only works if that article in that namespace has data on Wikidata) |
3 | Permit use of Wikidata in article text | This permits use of Wikidata wherever applicable in the text of the article, if the local editors of that article agree on that. Significant change in our project: edits to all affected "wikidata fields" would require editors to go to a different site, with a different interface. |
I think Wikidata needs more time to evolve and grow. This is obviously a balancing act: we don't want Wikidata to grow too fast and too much independent of this project. If that happens, Wikidata will likely never integrate well here. But right now, given the current user workflow issues, unless there can be some commitment made by the Wikidata team (a timeline) to fix these issues, I'd be hesitant to see us become so reliant on this project so quickly.
The ability to easily change and monitor our site content is very important and Wikidata currently seems to be a threat to this ability. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 21:10, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
If it's agreed that Wikidata Phase 2 will be used on English Wikipedia fairly soon, BLP issues should be considered, since it appears that (a) changes to linked Wikidata items are less visible than changes to articles and (b) sourcing on Wikidata is apparently a work in progress. My suggestion would be to exclude BLPs entirely for the moment, except for (a) interwiki links (obviously) and (b) authority control data. Further rollout for BLPs should wait for more experience to develop with use of Wikidata in other areas - perhaps most obviously, if the rollout is for infoboxes initially, in location articles. Rd232 talk 22:07, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
There is an option missing, and that option is: Default to Wikidata where present, but accept text where it is not. The problem with the options as laid out currently is that option 4 and this option ("4.5") are not mutually exclusive. For one field in one infobox, we might want to default to Wikidata display. For another field in the same infobox, we might want to default to local-display.
As for whether Sven's concerns, I don't see qualifiers, sourcing, lack of data, or missing data types as prohibiting integration. For e.g. Template:Infobox book or Template:Infobox video game, there are a number of fields for a number of games for which sourcing and qualifiers are not necessary as the information is trivially obtained from the article text or otherwise. (For example, I'm not sure I've ever seen ISBN sourced....)
Anyway, put me down for options 4, 4.5, or even 5 (if that counts option 4.5). -- Izno ( talk) 22:35, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
And my point is that maybe that shouldn't be allowed or necessary for some fields e.g. ISBN; is there a real need in most cases to keep it to article specific, or would it make sense to force users to edit the Wikidata item? Etc. For some fields, say gender (with persons), maybe it would make sense to be able to default to the article text as opposed to defaulting to Wikidata.
In all, I think it should be an article-by-article and an infobox-by-infobox and a field-by-field case whether something should default to what's entered in the field or to what's on Wikidata, and that's neither captured in options 4 nor in 5. -- Izno ( talk) 13:50, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
{{somebox}}
will use whatever it can from Wikidata as long as it is implemented as part of somebox, while {{somebox|param1=somevalue1}}
will use whatever it can from Wikidata except for whatever is called param1, and something like {{somebox|param1=somevalue1|…|paramN=somevalueN}}
will override everything. It possible we should avoid option 3, that is we should not use involved property-calls in the wiki-code for the article itself. That will be counterproductive, we want to make the editing experience simpler for the editor, not even more convolved than today. Still note that option 3 is nothing more than using Wikidata on a case-to-case -basis, but in a crappy and counter-intuitive way. I think it is better to default to Wikidata and then override that if anything goes wrong in specific articles. It will also make it possible to shift to a simpler wiki-code as we move data to Wikidata and verifies that everything works as expected. The end result in the articles wiki-code in this case will be something simple like {{somebox}}
and not something convolved like {{somebox|param1={{property:prop1}}|…|paramN={{property:propN}}}}
.
Jeblad (
talk) 17:37, 23 April 2013 (UTC)The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
There are two points discussed here and while the line between them is not entirely clear, there is nevertheless agreement that:
— Coren (talk) 19:21, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
Wikidata's Phase 2 deployment to English Wikipedia will occur on April 22, 2013; it has already occurred on 11 projects, and will be deployed on all other Wikipedias April 24. We need to think about if or how we will make use of the work of this sister project and how we want to interact with it now, and in the future. It should be noted, as well, that once Phase 2 deployment takes place, it will be technically possible for editors to use Wikidata's data anywhere in an article, not just the infobox; only the project's social conventions will determine whether or not any use of Wikidata's data within article text or in infoboxes is acceptable. - Risker ( talk) 07:39, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Wikidata is a new Wikimedia project whose objective is to be "a free knowledge base that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike...[I]t centralizes access to and management of structured data, such as interwiki references and statistical information." Essentially, it is an editable database.
Phase 1 of the Wikidata implementation is now in progress; its purpose is to manage interwiki links for articles. This implementation started on English Wikipedia in early March 2013; users may have noticed that bots made these changes on article pages they watch. At present, if it is necessary to modify any interwiki links that are already present, the change must be done on the Wikidata site, and should not be done on English Wikipedia.
The Phase 2 deployment of Wikidata is intended to permit editors to utilize the data stored in Wikidata when editing articles, in particular in completing the data fields for infoboxes. Editors and bots are currently adding data from articles and other sources to Wikidata. The long-range goal is that this data will be centrally stored on Wikidata, basically offering for structured data what Commons offers for multimedia files. This data can be used by any entity (including but not limited to Wikimedia projects). Any changes to the data would be done on Wikidata, thus permitting one edit to modify the content of a particular data statement wherever it is being used. Eventually, there is a plan to make this editing accessible directly on Wikipedia.
Phase 3 is intended to promote the use of Wikidata in list articles, and is scheduled to take place in mid- to late 2013.
Data is entered by editors and bots. Some bots extract data from Wikipedia infoboxes, categories and articles. Each article (" item" in Wikidata terminology) has a corresponding page on Wikidata, where the data resides. No alterations are made to Wikipedia when data is transferred from Wikipedia to Wikidata. Many experienced Wikipedians from dozens of projects are assisting in the development of Wikidata's database.
Data collection is in its infancy: many "items" (articles) have no data statements at all (only the list of interwiki links), and some have a few data statements but not all the information that is normally seen in a populated infobox. This will change as more information is transferred from the Wikipedias. Of note, a non-neglible number of title/subject conflicts have been identified during Phase I (interwiki links), not all of them easily resolvable. The Wikidata community is working out how to address these issues through requests for comment and other policy development, as is appropriate for a new project doing new things. Because most Wikidata volunteers come with extensive experience on one or more Wikimedia projects, Wikidata is considerably further along in its development than any other projects were only seven months after their first users were registered.
Reference sources found in the original Wikipedia are not able to be transferred to Wikidata at this time; several of the data types required to properly format a reference (e.g., dates, page numbers) are not available on Wikidata now (although this is an objective for the future). Some bots are adding "imported from _ Wikipedia" as the source of the information.
No. Even when the Wikidata extension is deployed, no Wikipedia project is required to use data from Wikidata anywhere in their project. It is a decision to be made by each editing community. The Wikipedias that decide to use Wikidata can determine how they want to use it. The decision is ours to make. Different options are discussed below.
Feedback on Wikidata is very welcome.
Option # | Option Description | Discussion |
---|---|---|
1 | Do not use Wikidata anywhere at this time on English Wikipedia. | Even if a Wikiproject or local editing community would like to use Wikidata data for certain use cases (e.g. ISBN or IMDB numbers, or the links to Commons), it is not allowed to use Wikidata anywhere. The community can revisit the use of Wikidata at a future date when it is more developed. No change to our project. |
2 | Test/experiment with Wikidata in a different namespace or as a subpage to an article (like Wikipedia:Wikidata/Wikidata Sandbox) | This permits interested editors to try out the features of Wikidata and test how it interacts with English Wikipedia. Does not affect "live" article content. (This requires that the given page also has its own item in Wikidata, from where the data is being pulled in.) |
3 | Permit use of Wikidata for selected infobox fields on specific articles with editor consensus. (Specifically, do not change the infobox template, only insert the Wikidata "template" in the field parameter.) i.e. in the template call in the article make a call to Wikidata and give the result to the template. | Wikidata would be integrated in a very limited way, only with local editorial consensus, and can be reversed easily on that specific article. Some change in our project: edits to all affected infobox fields would require editors to go to a different site, with a different interface. Data would be shared with other Wikipedia projects. Wikidata would be called in the article namespace directly, but only as a parameter for a template. Template calls get more complicated in the article namespace. |
4 | Modify existing infoboxes to permit Wikidata inclusion when there is no existing English Wikipedia data for a specific field in the infobox. | Modifies only a selected field, and only when there is no existing data in that field. As is currently possible, any field in an infobox can be removed if it is not appropriate for an article, including fields that use Wikidata. Modification to any Wikidata content in the field could be done either centrally at Wikidata, or by adding information to that field locally, which would override the data from Wikidata. Some change in our project: edits to all affected infobox fields would require editors to go to a different site, with a different interface, or to add the data locally to override Wikidata. |
5 | Modify one or more existing infoboxes to require Wikidata inclusion for specific fields in the infobox. | Modifies the selected field. As is currently possible, any field in an infobox can be removed if it is not appropriate for an article, including fields that use Wikidata. All modification of the content of the field would have to be done at Wikidata. Significant change in our project: edits to all affected infobox fields would require editors to go to a different site, with a different interface. |
Option # | Option Description | Discussion |
---|---|---|
1 | Do not use Wikidata in article text on English Wikipedia. | The community can revisit the use of Wikidata at a future date when it is more developed. No change to our project. |
2 | Test/experiment with Wikidata in a different namespace or as a subpage to an article | This permits interested editors to try out the features of Wikidata and test how it interacts with English Wikipedia. Those who participate would be encouraged to provide feedback to help Wikidata improve. Does not affect "live" article content. (This only works if that article in that namespace has data on Wikidata) |
3 | Permit use of Wikidata in article text | This permits use of Wikidata wherever applicable in the text of the article, if the local editors of that article agree on that. Significant change in our project: edits to all affected "wikidata fields" would require editors to go to a different site, with a different interface. |
I think Wikidata needs more time to evolve and grow. This is obviously a balancing act: we don't want Wikidata to grow too fast and too much independent of this project. If that happens, Wikidata will likely never integrate well here. But right now, given the current user workflow issues, unless there can be some commitment made by the Wikidata team (a timeline) to fix these issues, I'd be hesitant to see us become so reliant on this project so quickly.
The ability to easily change and monitor our site content is very important and Wikidata currently seems to be a threat to this ability. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 21:10, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
If it's agreed that Wikidata Phase 2 will be used on English Wikipedia fairly soon, BLP issues should be considered, since it appears that (a) changes to linked Wikidata items are less visible than changes to articles and (b) sourcing on Wikidata is apparently a work in progress. My suggestion would be to exclude BLPs entirely for the moment, except for (a) interwiki links (obviously) and (b) authority control data. Further rollout for BLPs should wait for more experience to develop with use of Wikidata in other areas - perhaps most obviously, if the rollout is for infoboxes initially, in location articles. Rd232 talk 22:07, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
There is an option missing, and that option is: Default to Wikidata where present, but accept text where it is not. The problem with the options as laid out currently is that option 4 and this option ("4.5") are not mutually exclusive. For one field in one infobox, we might want to default to Wikidata display. For another field in the same infobox, we might want to default to local-display.
As for whether Sven's concerns, I don't see qualifiers, sourcing, lack of data, or missing data types as prohibiting integration. For e.g. Template:Infobox book or Template:Infobox video game, there are a number of fields for a number of games for which sourcing and qualifiers are not necessary as the information is trivially obtained from the article text or otherwise. (For example, I'm not sure I've ever seen ISBN sourced....)
Anyway, put me down for options 4, 4.5, or even 5 (if that counts option 4.5). -- Izno ( talk) 22:35, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
And my point is that maybe that shouldn't be allowed or necessary for some fields e.g. ISBN; is there a real need in most cases to keep it to article specific, or would it make sense to force users to edit the Wikidata item? Etc. For some fields, say gender (with persons), maybe it would make sense to be able to default to the article text as opposed to defaulting to Wikidata.
In all, I think it should be an article-by-article and an infobox-by-infobox and a field-by-field case whether something should default to what's entered in the field or to what's on Wikidata, and that's neither captured in options 4 nor in 5. -- Izno ( talk) 13:50, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
{{somebox}}
will use whatever it can from Wikidata as long as it is implemented as part of somebox, while {{somebox|param1=somevalue1}}
will use whatever it can from Wikidata except for whatever is called param1, and something like {{somebox|param1=somevalue1|…|paramN=somevalueN}}
will override everything. It possible we should avoid option 3, that is we should not use involved property-calls in the wiki-code for the article itself. That will be counterproductive, we want to make the editing experience simpler for the editor, not even more convolved than today. Still note that option 3 is nothing more than using Wikidata on a case-to-case -basis, but in a crappy and counter-intuitive way. I think it is better to default to Wikidata and then override that if anything goes wrong in specific articles. It will also make it possible to shift to a simpler wiki-code as we move data to Wikidata and verifies that everything works as expected. The end result in the articles wiki-code in this case will be something simple like {{somebox}}
and not something convolved like {{somebox|param1={{property:prop1}}|…|paramN={{property:propN}}}}
.
Jeblad (
talk) 17:37, 23 April 2013 (UTC)