Hello there. I have been an active and vocal supporter of Wikidata since
almost the day it went live, and after giving Phase II a legitimate chance,
I have to say that in my opinion the decision to deploy Phase II with only
a small number of the expected features has been a massive mistake. Yes, I
understand that the project was losing momentum and that several people
commented that they felt that there was nothing to do on the project before
Phase II hit, however the partial release has caused considerable
confusion, and worse, has caused people to make decisions *based on what is
available now* as opposed to based on *what would be the best choice in the
long term*.
It would have been one thing if Phase II were released with 80% of its
projected features and an official list from the developers of the things
that were left out. Instead we got what I have to guess is around 10% of
the projected features, and if there's an official list of things that are
missing or a timeline of when they're going to appear, I haven't seen it.
I also have to question the timing of the release, bringing Phase II live
just before Wikidata hits English Wikipedia. Was this done on purpose to
try and bring over some of the Wikipedia editors? If not, the timing is
awful. Nothing of this scale and level of technical sophistication ever
gets deployed to English Wikipedia smoothly, and I think that the near
future is going to show that the English Wikipedia deployment is going to
be competing with the Phase II rollout for the time of the coders, who will
need to fix bugs in both areas.
I'm sorry for being so pessimistic, but I really do feel let down by this
release. It's like being told that you're going to watch a feature film and
then only getting the official trailer. The trailer is good, but it's not
what people were expecting and it's not particularly valuable on its own.
I look forward to any response that the Wikidata staff or the community
might have to this.
Sven