Holy moly folks,
100 emails about this is slightly more than I expected...
On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 5:22 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hiding behind Lydia is not graceful.
Everyone who knows me should know that it is quite hard to physically hide behind me ;-) Seriously though. Daniel is right to defer this to me as in the end it is my call on the team. He was replying here as I'm officially on vacation for another 24h.
So here's the assumptions I am working with and why I think this is beneficial: * We do want more sister projects to make use of Wikidata data. * Right now one of several obstacles to more usage of Wikidata on sister projects is that it is simply too hard for most people - even technical ones. * Lua is great but poses a barrier to entry. The property parser function offers an easier alternative that more people can work with even if it is not as powerful as Lua. * People want to try and prototype with what Wikidata offers. The property parser function easily allows this. * Property IDs are posing a barrier to entry and understanding Wikidata. Natural language labels for the properties make this easier not just for the person who wrote the piece of wiki text but everyone else as well. * It is not just experienced template coders who want to make use of the parser function (This comes from discussions with several Wikipedians who want to try things but are not advanced enough for more than the property parser function.) * Editing infobox template code is hard! Wikidata should make editing them easier, not harder. Or at the very least not make the situation worse.
Based on all this I think we need to improve the parser function at least to some degree from what it is now.
Cheers Lydia