I recently introduced wikidata to a (very computationally savvy) colleague
by sending him this link:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q423111
His response is indicative of an interface problem that I think is actually
very important:
"Is there a simple way to get the RDF for a given concept? The page seems
to only present the english names for the concept and its linked concepts."
Leaving aside RDF, it is really not straightforward for newcomers to get
from a concept page like that to the corresponding structured data. This
could be solved with the consistent addition of a simple link like "view
json/xml/rdf" to each of the concept pages on wikidata. They would just be
links to the API calls: e.g.
http://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=Q423111 in this
case.
As the concept pages themselves get tossed around a lot, such an addition
could be extremely valuable in teaching the uninitiated what its all about
and would come at very little cost - to me, this button is akin to the
'view source' action on web pages - an absolutely fundamental part of how
the web grows - even now.
-Ben