Erik Moeller wrote:
Gerard,
first of all, pursuing cooperations like this will always be very slow
as long as it's a completely volunteer-driven effort. I think
Wikimedia absolutely needs several people who can work on such matters
full-time. Of course, you could ask the organization you have spoken
to if they would be willing to fund the preparation itself (technical
evaluation, research, planning, negotiation).
However, I also think we will have a much better negotiation position
once Wikidata is past the prototype stage. Getting international
metadata for Wikipedia for free is indeed a fascinating prospect, but
I don't see it as an issue we need to address *right now*.
Best,
Erik
Erik,
This is the moment when a Dutch organisation asked to have our content
in order to add metadata. Therefore this is the time we have to
formulate an answer. When we do not, the opportunity to maximise the
return of this effort will go past us. You are 100% correct that this
will need Wikidata and we do agree that having more people working on
Wikidata and Ultimate Wiktionary is a good thing.
This organisation needs to set up its infrastructure to host the
Wikipedia content and add the IEEE LOM data, it will not benefit from
similar efforts when it goes it alone. It is therefore in its own
intrest to cooperate with us to have us host this data. The timeline for
this project is not only for us to decide as we are not driving this
effort so I disagree, we need to address this now and work out what the
optimum timeline is.
Thanks,
GerardM