I'm confused by this from today's Wikidata weekly summary:
First of all, the title makes no sense because "semi-automatic addition of references to Wikidata statements" is one of the main things that the tool can't currently do. You'll almost always end up with duplicate statements if there's an existing statement, rather than the desired behavior of just adding the statement.
Second, I'm not sure who "Hjfocs" is (why does everyone have to make up fake wikinames?), but why are they asking for more feedback when there's been ample feedback already? There hasn't been an issue with getting people to test the tool or provide feedback based on the testing. The issue has been with getting anyone to act on the feedback. Everything is a) "too hard," or b) "beyond our resources," or depends on something in category a or b, or is incompatible with the arbitrary implementation scheme chosen, or some other excuse.
We're 12-18+ months into the project, depending on how you measure, and not only is the tool not usable yet, but it's no longer improving, so I think it's time to take a step back and ask some fundamental questions.
- Is the current data pipeline and front end gadget the right approach and the right technology for this task? Can they be fixed to be suitable for users?
- If so, should Google continue to have sole responsibility for it or should it be transferred to the Wikidata team or someone else who'll actually work on it?
- If not, what should the data pipeline and tooling look like to make maximum use of the Freebase data?
The whole project needs a reboot.