Wikidata, an initiative led by Wikimedia Deutschland and aimed at providing a central Wikimedia data repository, has prompted a raft of comments in the week after its first major press release ( Signpost coverage). To recap, development will proceed in three stages. The first, expected to end by August of this year, will overhaul the language versions system by providing a central interwiki repository. The second, to finish by December, will use a similar method to standardise the content of infoboxes, allowing editors to add and use the data within the framework and allowing smaller wikis to share in localised versions of this data for their own infoboxes. Finally, the third stage of development will enable the automation of list and chart creation based on Wikidata data, at which point (hopefully by March 2013) Wikimedia Deutschland plans to hand over operation and maintenance to the Wikimedia Foundation.
To this framework, several requirements were added to the project pages this week, seemingly to reassure Wikimedians by establishing a narrow, achievable focus. They include a stipulation that "the success of Wikidata is not measured by the amount of data it stores, but by the creation of a healthy community and its usefulness for Wikipedia and other applications" and another affirming that "Wikidata will not be about the truth, but about statements and their references". Nevertheless, the Wikidata mailing list has been abuzz with discussion of possible applications and extensions of the project. In light of the level of attention being given to the formative project, the Signpost decided to catch up with Wikidata's community communications manager Lydia Pintscher and developer Daniel Kinzler. [nb 1]
The Signpost: When you express this in simple terms, what would you say is the "take home" message of Wikidata?
It certainly seems like an interesting project, and one that has captured imaginations for many years. Why do you think no-one has been able to act on the same idea before? For example, Daniel, you worked on the not dissimilar OmegaWiki project back in 2005 – have lessons been learned from projects like that?
How do you envisage convincing Wikimedians who instinctively want to keep local control over articles' infoboxes that centralisation is a good thing?
The project description encourages volunteer developers who want to contribute code to do so. How do you see this working out with WikiData?
In the past, big projects such as LiquidThreads have proved difficult to bring to fruition. Are you confident that Wikidata will make it past phase 1 and 2 and into phase 3? Are you confident you will be able to keep the project sufficiently tightly focused to allow this to happen?
Lydia, Daniel, thank you.
Wikidata, an initiative led by Wikimedia Deutschland and aimed at providing a central Wikimedia data repository, has prompted a raft of comments in the week after its first major press release ( Signpost coverage). To recap, development will proceed in three stages. The first, expected to end by August of this year, will overhaul the language versions system by providing a central interwiki repository. The second, to finish by December, will use a similar method to standardise the content of infoboxes, allowing editors to add and use the data within the framework and allowing smaller wikis to share in localised versions of this data for their own infoboxes. Finally, the third stage of development will enable the automation of list and chart creation based on Wikidata data, at which point (hopefully by March 2013) Wikimedia Deutschland plans to hand over operation and maintenance to the Wikimedia Foundation.
To this framework, several requirements were added to the project pages this week, seemingly to reassure Wikimedians by establishing a narrow, achievable focus. They include a stipulation that "the success of Wikidata is not measured by the amount of data it stores, but by the creation of a healthy community and its usefulness for Wikipedia and other applications" and another affirming that "Wikidata will not be about the truth, but about statements and their references". Nevertheless, the Wikidata mailing list has been abuzz with discussion of possible applications and extensions of the project. In light of the level of attention being given to the formative project, the Signpost decided to catch up with Wikidata's community communications manager Lydia Pintscher and developer Daniel Kinzler. [nb 1]
The Signpost: When you express this in simple terms, what would you say is the "take home" message of Wikidata?
It certainly seems like an interesting project, and one that has captured imaginations for many years. Why do you think no-one has been able to act on the same idea before? For example, Daniel, you worked on the not dissimilar OmegaWiki project back in 2005 – have lessons been learned from projects like that?
How do you envisage convincing Wikimedians who instinctively want to keep local control over articles' infoboxes that centralisation is a good thing?
The project description encourages volunteer developers who want to contribute code to do so. How do you see this working out with WikiData?
In the past, big projects such as LiquidThreads have proved difficult to bring to fruition. Are you confident that Wikidata will make it past phase 1 and 2 and into phase 3? Are you confident you will be able to keep the project sufficiently tightly focused to allow this to happen?
Lydia, Daniel, thank you.
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In terms of logos, I much prefer the top one. Res Mar 01:07, 9 April 2012 (UTC) reply