Saluton Nicolas,

Le 30/11/2017 à 00:23, Nicolas VIGNERON a écrit :
Mathieu,

I know you and like you personally, that why I can say that this mail is clearly not your best argument.

Despite saying multiple times this is not a manifesto nor against Wikidata, your mail seems clearly fuelled with biases and misjudgements (especially Wikidata can't be « discontinued quietly » not now that it's so widely used in Wikimedia projects, even the wiktionaries are *already* using Wikidata).
That's perfectly plausible that my view is fuelled with biases and misjudgements, and that's why I'm looking for feedback that might help in correcting them if needed. I prefer to expose my errors blatantly and seize opportunities to correct them rather than confine myself in my possibly misguided views.

Of course, the statement that Wikidata can't be « discontinued quietly » is shocking. Surely I'm a little provocative here. But one have to put that in perspective with the fact that my previous attempts to get feedback on this were far less provocative, or at least were aiming at being as unprovocative as I could do. So I recognize you are right to point this, all the more as I made my previous more cordial demands in less visible canals.

Dissecting each single phrase point by point is violent, borderline mean and definitely not constructive ; cross-posting this mail on multiple places doesn't help either. This is not the good way to debate peacefully.
First, if people felt personally assaulted by my message, I apologize. I wasn't aware that treating a topic point by point extensively could be perceived as such a violent behaviour. I don't want to harass anyone, I want to get constructive feedback on this topic from as many people of our community that I can get. If there are better way to achieve this through documented peaceful process, I would welcome references to this kind of documentation. And if we don't have that kind of documentation, I think it would be interesting that we build one.

For better or worse, Wikidata choose CC0 and it will be quite difficult to change the licence now (the example of licence change on OpenStreetMap illustrate it quite painfully).
Actually, with CC0 – if it appeared that all the data contained in Wikidata really can be published under CC0 – we could switch the whole database to whatever license we want. That was even explicitly stated as is at the start of the project that:
So do I understand it correctly that during development and testing, we can can go with CC-0, and later relicense to whatever seems suitable, which is possible with CC-0?, Denny Vrandečić, https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata//2012-April/000185.html
But as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't suggest for such a unilateral move. For me, just allowing a tracking of license for each item would be enough.
We have to get approval of the community, there was multiple lengthy and non-conclusive discussions, it's not something that will be done with a ranting mail.
I'm interested with links to this community discussions and clear approval of the community.

For me, the situation is quite simple, Wikidata needs lexiographical data and the Wikimedia projects needs Wikidata to have these data.
I agree with that, or at least that it would be very positive for our community to have this kind of tools.
Nobody suggest in no way to do license laundering nor to violates Wiktionaries licence,
It's not suggestion, it's what Wikidata is already doing with Wikipedia, despite the initial statement of Wikidata team[1] that it wouldn't do that because it's illegal :
"Alexrk2, it is true that Wikidata under CC0 would not be allowed to import content from a Share-Alike data source. Wikidata does not plan to extract content out of Wikipedia at all. Wikidata will provide data that can be reused in the Wikipedias."
– Denny Vrandečić https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikidata#Is_CC_the_right_license_for_data.3F
I think that the extent to which massive import without respecting license of the source  should be investigated properly by the Wikimedia legal team, or some qualified consultants.

In the mid time, based on its previous practises, it's clear that promises of Wikidata team regarding respect of licenses can not be trusted. So even if they suggested that that kind of massive import won't be done, it wouldn't be enough.

in fact we could simply import Public Domain sources (in the same way the wiktionaries did, in frwikt a big chunk of entries come from the Littré and the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, and there is enough dictionaries waiting in the Wikisources to keep us busy for years) but it would be a shame for Wikidata to not profits from wiktionarists expertise.
I agree with that. All the more, all this material we imported helped much in populating the project, but it often includes heavy biases, outdated definitions which are not marked as is, completely sexists and racists definitions that we are improving with the goals and values of our movement in mind. So it's not just expertise of contributors, but also all the work they already achieved that should be mergeable in the Wikidata solution. Only allowing CC0 will make that impossible.
Let's get over the petty and unsolvable issues and work intelligently and pragmatically to improve Wikidata.

You entitled to disagree with the way that has been chosen and not take part in it (and from your editcount, I see that you don't) but please don't destroy others efforts and try to be more aligned with the wiki-spirit.
I'm not trying to destroy the work of any part of our community, but on the contrary I'm aiming at protect its sustainability. If my concerns are only mere delusions, that's great. But if it's not, I would feel ashamed in the future that I suspected possible avoidable bad scenario and did nothing about that.

All the more, Wikidata aims at being ubiquitous under all Wikimedia projects, even if some integration are moderated through community consensus. So there is no way I might avoid it completely while continuing to contribute in Wikimedia projects. Actually I have recently learn that there are already data which are automatically inserted in Wikidata when publishing contributions on others mediawiki projects, but so far I'm not aware of what is cover exactly. All the more, I am in fact very favourable to a more ubiquitous integration of Wikidata in our ecosystem. But not with the current license conditions.

I hope my answer wasn't too point by point so that it wont fall in the problems you mentioned.

Amike,
mathieu


A galon, ~nicolas


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