Hi,
are we really speaking about the same? - Pure data serving should be possible there is no disagree here as I think. - Should infoboxes be provided?
I was not speaking about the possibility for Wikipedia then. At least I did not meant it. I more likely wanted to point out that we should separate the infrastructure generating those infoboxes from this used for serving the data.
Having this in my mind I was thinking a bit more wide and questioned if creating the templates for the infoboxes itself should really be part of wikidata or if it should be part of the further development of the rendering engine to provide an easy possibility to fill the infoboxes with data.
It will be probably the easiest way to separate this into more steps:
The first should be to provide an easy way to integrate single properties into the article's pure text. Inside the article [[en:Tiger]] we are then able to write sentences like:
"In 1929, the British taxonomist Reginald Innes Pocock subordinated the species under the genus {{wikidata:tiger:genus}} using the scientific name {{wikidata:tiger:bionomial_name}}.<ref>{{wikidata:tiger:ref4646413}}</ref>"
Inside an infobox it should also be possible to use those facts:
{{Taxobox | status = EN
... | regnum = [[{{wikidata:tiger:regnume}}]] | phylum = [[{{wikidata:tiger:phylum}}]] | classis = [[{{wikidata:tiger:classis}}]] | ordo = [[{{wikidata:tiger:ordo}}]] | familia = [[{{wikidata:tiger:familia}}]] | genus = ''[[{{wikidata:tiger:genus}}]]'' ...
}}
I know this looks very silly, but should be possible anyway by providing the possibility to use facts inside flowing text. If somebody likes it, he could use it like this or wait until the next step.
The next step should be to upgrade the infobox templates to teach them to not just use single facts. They should also be able to use "data-structures" as they are called in C/C++. I always thought that this is not part of wikidata, more part of the rendering engine.
This also needs to work in multiple steps for correct rendering of e.g. one of the above wikidata-requests: For a request for "{{wikidata:tiger:regnume}}" "[[Animal]]ia" should be returned. The link location and the shown text are not the same. The birthday of Barack Obama should be anything like "[[4. August]] [[1961]]", as this format is used very often in the German Wikipedia. This example should show that this format is necessary, because of two different links.
So the first part of rendering should be the replacement all occurrences of the wikidata-tags. Here we can also replace the "{{infobox:wikidata:tiger}}" by what is already used inside the source text.
The first step should generate source text in the style we already know. Then we could use the next step to render the article shown in the browser.
Marco
On 2012-06-16 11:09, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, I absolutely agree that Wikidata should be able to serve data in an unformatted way. I absolutely disagree that there is no need for serving data formatted in info boxes. Consider this use case:
Someone translated the texts associated with all the popes in Xhosa. There are no articles on popes in the Xhosa Wikipedia but because of the information and the info box in Wikidata it is possible to include information in Xhosa on the not found page together with the interwiki data. As this information is well presented, it makes sense for people to volunteer and translate Wikidata texts, as this information is well presented, people do select a language that provides information on the subject.
Consequently being able to serve pure data does not imply that it should not serve formatted data. Technically there is nothing stopping us from doing both. Thanks, Gerard
On 15 June 2012 19:55, Marco Fleckinger <marco.fleckinger@gmail.com mailto:marco.fleckinger@gmail.com> wrote:
Hallo, On 2012-06-14 12:33, Gerard Meijssen wrote: Hoi, Technically there is nothing stopping Wikidata from hosting multiple infoboxes on the same subject. The big thing about such infoboxes is that their layout is the same for all subjects in the same category. This does not mean that every one looks the same but it does mean they follow a consistent pattern. Providing multiple infobox templates for the same subject is a very good point, as it is not necessary to override (see below) on each single page of a language version. When people talk about things like colours and stuff, it becomes highly emotional but in the final analysis at this stage it is just more bike shedding. It should be obvious that attributes like colour can be overriden.. Given that info boxes will not be supported in the near future ... I agree that overriding attributes should be possible. The pages of different Wikimedia-projects sometimes look very different in colours and so on. Just think of "acceptable view": Overriding should be possible on two different positions: # Style-sheet: Example: The box may behave different if we use "Lista de correo electrónico" instead of "Mailing list" as a key word # Rendering: * Value-conversion: different units and languages. ** −459,67 °F = 0 °Ra = −218,52 °R = −273,15 °C = 0 K ** city(48°8′24″N 11°34′30″E) = "Munich" = "München" = "Múnich" = "Monaco di Baviera" ... * Precision: ** π shown as "3.1415926" with precision 7 ** extended to subjects like locations of e.g. shopping malls more or less precision is wanted. For example the location of [[de:Europark_(__Einkaufszentrum)]]: *** "Salzburg (City), Austria" (for zh.wikipedia.org <http://zh.wikipedia.org>) *** "Salzburg, Austria" (for de.wikipedia.org <http://de.wikipedia.org>) *** "Taxham, Salzburg" (for http://salzburg.com/wiki) The notion that people should curate the info boxes locally is something that I do not subscribe to. Not being able to agree on data and sources is the same as not being able to reach a neutral point of view. This does not mean that multiple sources may not agree but equally it does not mean that different sources cannot be maintained from within Wikidata. Finally, when Wikidata provides data and info boxes, it does not mean that any project is compelled to use it. As Wikidata matures, it will become increasingly clear that it is not the best practice. Thanks, I'm not a server specialist and not an excellent developer but due to the fact that it should also be possible to use pure data outside of wikimedia, data providing and page rendering should be seperated strict from each other. Wikidata should therefore only be responsible for retrieving data with correct precision, value conversion and mode as requested. The rendering engine, not part of Wikidata, should be responsible for creating the HTML-code of the whole article including that of the infobox as well. GerardM On 14 June 2012 12:11, Gregor Hagedorn <g.m.hagedorn@gmail.com <mailto:g.m.hagedorn@gmail.com> <mailto:g.m.hagedorn@gmail.com <mailto:g.m.hagedorn@gmail.com>__>> wrote: While I agree that it is desirable to support simple, preformatted Infoboxes that can, with minimal effort be re-used in a large number of language versions of Wikipedia, I strongly disagree with the demand to make this the only choice. I think the present Wikidata approach to allow local Wikipedias to customize their infoboxes by accessing wikidata properties property-by-property is the right path. The large Wikipedias with many editors have invested considerable creative energy into making quite a large number of infoboxes elaborate information containers. That includes formatting, images and hand-crafted links in both the "field name" and the "field value" side. Some values are expressed through svg graphics, other values expressed through background color coding, etc. Limiting the usability of Wikidata to plain vanilla infox boxes could cause considerable resistance in these communities. And although small Wikipedia will profit a lot from Wikidata, without the engagement of editors from the large Wikipedias into curating Wikidata content, the increased synergies will not happen. Another issue is that (I believe that) Wikidata does not have a notion of ordering properties. Correct? This is no issue for the present Wikidata approach because infoboxes remain curated in each local Wikipedia. However, in a centralized "one size fits all" approach, replacing existing infoboxes where information is presented in a logical order with an alphabetical property order would create huge resistance (and would be a complex issue that Wikidata would have to deal with, allowing property ordering and filtering). I believe that Wikidata correctly aims to provide a smooth transition path, where it is possible to obtain only part of an infobox from wikidata and inject wikidata content into existing infobox layouts. That said: I would encourage a third party contributor to try to create a default Wikidata infobox generator in a way (extension installable in multiple Wikipedias) that enables a wikipedia to autocreate a good looking, plain vanilla infobox with minimal effort. Gregor Marco _________________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/__mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l>
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