I fully agree with Robert and Phoebe in this matter. Wikidata is an option.
Requiring first to come up with rules on how to use Wikidata before it is
switched on simply won't work, because there is not sufficient interest and
experience for this discussion.
Or, put differently, the Wikidata proposal has been published nearly two
years ago. We have communicated on all channels for more than one year. I
can hardly think of any technical enhancement of Wikipedia - ever - which
was communicated as strongly beforehand as Wikidata. If, in that time, the
community has not managed to discuss the topic, it might be because such
changes only get discussed effectively after they occur.
I base this statement on having studied previous introductions of new
technical features to the Wikipedias (check for that my paper with Mathias
Schindler), like the category system or parserfunctions.
Since Wikidata phase 2 is actually a less intrusive change than phase 1,
and based on the effectiveness of the discussion about phase 2 on the
English Wikipedia so far, I think that a post-deployment discussion is the
right way to go.
Also, a very important consideration is raised by Phoebe: Wikidata is in
its current form still in its infancy, and for a well developed project
like the English Wikipedia this means that the actual usage (and effect) is
expected to be minimal in the current stage. The deployment of phase 2 this
week would merely be a start for an organic co-evolution of Wikidata and
the Wikipedias in the months and years to come.
But this can only happen 'in the wild', as a priori debates about the
possible usages of such features will remain not only too speculative, but
also highly undemocratic due to the minimal engagement of the community in
advance.
This email cannot resolve any worries surrounding the deployment of
Wikidata phase 2, but then again, no amount of discussion could. But I hope
it justifies the decision.
Cheers,
Denny,
who wrote this Email on his mobile phone because he didn't take his
computer to his vacations :-)
On Apr 6, 2013 10:40 AM, "Robert Rohde" <rarohde(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Risker,
You are right that it will undoubtedly get used as soon as it is available,
and it is unfortunate that it will presumably get deployed without any
agreement having been reached on wiki about how it should be used.
However, when it comes to an area like infoboxes, I think a lot of hardship
could be avoided if the community can ultimately come together and adopt a
sensible set of guidelines for how wikidata should be used.
For example, one of the reasons Commons is able to work reasonably well
within the global context is that every wiki ultimately has the option of
ignoring it and uploading locally preferred files instead. I would argue
that the use of wikidata in infoboxes should follow much the same
principle. Specifically, templates ought to be engineered such that values
are obtained from wikidata only when no corresponding value is present
locally. So for example, one might have an infobox with a field for
birthplace. If enwiki specifies birthplace = Athens, Georgia, then enwiki
will be guaranteed to display "Athens, Georgia". And the template should
query wikidata only if the field is omitted. So, if birthplace= is left
blank, then we might ask wikidata for the answer, and can use the value
recorded there, but only so long as no value was filled in locally. That's
the kind of behavior that I think makes sense for infoboxes. Decisions
about when to rely on local values and when to rely on wikidata are
obviously an issue were guidelines are needed. For example, I'd argue that
wikidata should never be used to define elements that are likely to be
controversial or subject to dispute (e.g. Gdansk/Danzig). It could be a
reasonable policy that controversial data values should always be retained
using strictly local input. That would limit the potential for
controversies over wikidata values from spilling into Wikipedia.
Unfortunately, I suspect we are going to take a while finding our way when
it comes to wikidata interactions, though that doesn't necessarily mean we
won't ultimately have coherent policies on its use. While obviously a bit
late in the game to be starting now, I think many people would welcome a
discussion on wiki of what best practices for the use of wikidata ought to
look like, and I'm sure your input could be valuable to that discussion.
-Robert Rohde
aka Dragons_flight
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