I recently introduced wikidata to a (very computationally savvy) colleague by sending him this link: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q423111
His response is indicative of an interface problem that I think is actually very important: "Is there a simple way to get the RDF for a given concept? The page seems to only present the english names for the concept and its linked concepts."
Leaving aside RDF, it is really not straightforward for newcomers to get from a concept page like that to the corresponding structured data. This could be solved with the consistent addition of a simple link like "view json/xml/rdf" to each of the concept pages on wikidata. They would just be links to the API calls: e.g. http://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=Q423111 in this case.
As the concept pages themselves get tossed around a lot, such an addition could be extremely valuable in teaching the uninitiated what its all about and would come at very little cost - to me, this button is akin to the 'view source' action on web pages - an absolutely fundamental part of how the web grows - even now.
-Ben
Hi Ben,
That's a very good point. We should really have direct links to JSON and RDF for each item (e.g., at the top-right, which seems to be the custom now on many web sites). We don't have an XML export (unless you count RDF/XML).
The links would point to the standard export URLs: * https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:EntityData/Q423111.json * https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:EntityData/Q423111.rdf
Regarding RDF, the live RDF export has been rewritten and is almost final now. Right now, the RDF exported on the site is still the old one that does not contain all data yet, but this will change soon.
Regards,
Markus
On 11.06.2015 01:25, Benjamin Good wrote:
I recently introduced wikidata to a (very computationally savvy) colleague by sending him this link: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q423111
His response is indicative of an interface problem that I think is actually very important: "Is there a simple way to get the RDF for a given concept? The page seems to only present the english names for the concept and its linked concepts."
Leaving aside RDF, it is really not straightforward for newcomers to get from a concept page like that to the corresponding structured data. This could be solved with the consistent addition of a simple link like "view json/xml/rdf" to each of the concept pages on wikidata. They would just be links to the API calls: e.g. http://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=Q423111 in this case.
As the concept pages themselves get tossed around a lot, such an addition could be extremely valuable in teaching the uninitiated what its all about and would come at very little cost - to me, this button is akin to the 'view source' action on web pages - an absolutely fundamental part of how the web grows - even now.
-Ben
Wikidata mailing list Wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 9:08 AM, Markus Krötzsch markus@semantic-mediawiki.org wrote:
Hi Ben,
That's a very good point. We should really have direct links to JSON and RDF for each item (e.g., at the top-right, which seems to be the custom now on many web sites). We don't have an XML export (unless you count RDF/XML).
Do you have links to some examples how other websites do this?
The links would point to the standard export URLs:
- https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:EntityData/Q423111.json
- https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:EntityData/Q423111.rdf
Regarding RDF, the live RDF export has been rewritten and is almost final now. Right now, the RDF exported on the site is still the old one that does not contain all data yet, but this will change soon.
Yeah I'd rather not promote it more before we have that sorted.
Cheers Lydia
On 11.06.2015 15:06, Lydia Pintscher wrote:
On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 9:08 AM, Markus Krötzsch markus@semantic-mediawiki.org wrote:
Hi Ben,
That's a very good point. We should really have direct links to JSON and RDF for each item (e.g., at the top-right, which seems to be the custom now on many web sites). We don't have an XML export (unless you count RDF/XML).
Do you have links to some examples how other websites do this?
Here are two examples: * http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz99.html * http://d-nb.info/gnd/1026312019 (that's more to the right than to the top)
Wikipedia already has links in the upper right of its pages to map services. Somewhere similar might be intuitive. Of course, this type of prominent link only makes sense for sites that are primarily data repositories. BBC Music, for example, does not have an RDF download link on every page, although they provide RDF.
Markus
Lydia,
Showing the link to the concept URI on the client intended for human browsers is a little confusing. I tried that link, but the content negotiation fooled me into thinking it was just a redirect and lead me astray.
An example that I have found very valuable in my work is UniProt - one of the earliest adopters of semantic web technology in the life sciences. See for example,
http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/P15692 and click on 'Format' in the middle of the page there. Provides both human and various computational representations of the data.
At one point in time, I recall that freebase added an 'RDF' link to each of their pages. Obviously they aren't the model to follow for everything... but I remember that being a well-received step forward.
-Ben
p.s. Having very visible links to PDF versions of these pages but not structured data just seems wrong . ;)
On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 6:47 AM, Markus Krötzsch < markus@semantic-mediawiki.org> wrote:
On 11.06.2015 15:06, Lydia Pintscher wrote:
On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 9:08 AM, Markus Krötzsch markus@semantic-mediawiki.org wrote:
Hi Ben,
That's a very good point. We should really have direct links to JSON and RDF for each item (e.g., at the top-right, which seems to be the custom now on many web sites). We don't have an XML export (unless you count RDF/XML).
Do you have links to some examples how other websites do this?
Here are two examples:
- http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz99.html
- http://d-nb.info/gnd/1026312019 (that's more to the right than to the
top)
Wikipedia already has links in the upper right of its pages to map services. Somewhere similar might be intuitive. Of course, this type of prominent link only makes sense for sites that are primarily data repositories. BBC Music, for example, does not have an RDF download link on every page, although they provide RDF.
Markus
Wikidata mailing list Wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
Thanks for the examples :) You're right that the current situation with leading back to the same page is confusing. This needs design input. I've opened https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T102155 for that. Please do add further input you have to that.
Cheers Lydia
Hi!
The links would point to the standard export URLs:
Speaking about these, shouldn't we also have link rel="alternate" for export formats in the header?
On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 8:30 PM, Stas Malyshev smalyshev@wikimedia.org wrote:
Speaking about these, shouldn't we also have link rel="alternate" for export formats in the header?
That is https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T96298
Cheers Lydia
Hi Ben,
On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 1:25 AM, Benjamin Good ben.mcgee.good@gmail.com wrote:
I recently introduced wikidata to a (very computationally savvy) colleague by sending him this link: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q423111
His response is indicative of an interface problem that I think is actually very important: "Is there a simple way to get the RDF for a given concept? The page seems to only present the english names for the concept and its linked concepts."
Leaving aside RDF, it is really not straightforward for newcomers to get from a concept page like that to the corresponding structured data. This could be solved with the consistent addition of a simple link like "view json/xml/rdf" to each of the concept pages on wikidata. They would just be links to the API calls: e.g. http://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=Q423111 in this case.
As the concept pages themselves get tossed around a lot, such an addition could be extremely valuable in teaching the uninitiated what its all about and would come at very little cost - to me, this button is akin to the 'view source' action on web pages - an absolutely fundamental part of how the web grows - even now.
There is a link in the sidebar titled "concept URI" which takes you to the URI for the concept of the current page and does content negotiation. I am trying to strike a balance between making this more visible and not overloading the UI and confusing those users who have no idea about any of this. Suggestions for how to achieve this better than we currently do are welcome.
Cheers Lydia