Hoi,
The WikiData project is of real interest to me. It is very much the second
coming of what is still a great idea. Providing an environment where in one
central environment data is maintained. In essence data can be expressed in
triples and with such a statement you get firmly into semantic web and into
language technology.
The original Wikidata was about "solving" the issue that Wiktionary is
doing the same thing over and over again. Consider, a word like "travel" is
linked on 37 wiktionaries and in essence they all say that it is an English
word, a verb and has a particular meaning with translations ... on a high
level all this data is the same.
When you look at a word like "Nederland" at OmegaWiki, you will agree that
Amsterdam is the capital of my country and this can be expressed as a
"triple" and all the two other elements in this triple can be translated.
Check out the word, check it out in other languages (like Arabic or Russian
or Dutch) and you will find the kind of functionality that will be a
challenge for this new project.
Data projects, software projects have one big problem. They typically do
not consider their use in other languages. They find it surprising that you
can not really add all this language stuff in at a later time.
Wikidata will be used by Wikipedia and Wikipedia is at this moment only
some 283 languages. Not one, not two and not fifty. There are over 7000
languages in the ISO-639-3...
<grin> I have been asked to be an advisor to this project and I accepted
</grin> An advisor advises and my advise is to make WikiData II a tools for
all our projects from the start. At OmegaWiki we learned a lot and we LOVE
to share our knowledge with you.
Thanks,
GerardM
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/travel
http://www.omegawiki.org/Expression:Nederland