Congratulations Lydia. I think you will do a great job with this.
On your three areas we need to focus on I have some comments:
1. Building trust in our data. The project is still young and the
Wikipedia editors and others are still wary of using data from Wikidata on a large scale. We need to build tools and processes to make our data more trustworthy. 2. Improving the user experience around Wikidata. Building Wikidata to the point where it is today was a tremendous technical task that we achieved in a rather short time. This though meant that in places the user experience has not gotten as much attention. We need to make the experience of using Wikidata smoother. 3. Making Wikidata easier to understand. Wikidata is a very geeky and technical project. However to be truly successful it will need to be easy to get the ideas behind it.
1. I think that if we have to wait till wikipedians trust our data before they use it then we may never get there. Rather we need to make it easier for wikipedians to edit our data than it is for them to edit a local infobox so that wikipedians themselves can improve our data.
2. This means the emphasis is on improving the user experience around the wikipedia interface to wikidata. When that is smooth enough then no one will care that the edit interface on wikidata itself is a bit geeky.
3. If most people interact with wikidata via infoboxes on wikipedia and Vcards on wikivoyage then wikidata becomes much easier to understand - at least the bit of wikidata they interact with. Then users, for the most part, don't need to 'get' the ideas behind the infobox.
From this the priorities, as I see them, are:
A. Finish the remaining datatypes.
B. Develop and test model infoboxes on wikidata ready for wikiprojects in any language to adopt and deploy. (To test these infoboxes we will need to be able to enable wikidata as a wikibase client with a sitelink from every item to its talk page so infoboxes on the talk page work like infoboxes on any other sitelinked page.) Tweak the ontology as necessary to make the infoboxes work.
C. Adapt the wikipedia infobox visual editor so it can edit as 2. above. Deploy the revised visual editor on wikidata first so we can test it before it goes live elsewhere.
This is just my opinion but I offer it as a conversation starter. Is my list very different from yours?
Joe (filceolaire)
Hi Joe,
On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 7:50 PM, Joe Filceolaire filceolaire@gmail.com wrote:
Congratulations Lydia. I think you will do a great job with this.
Thank you!
On your three areas we need to focus on I have some comments:
- Building trust in our data. The project is still young and the
Wikipedia editors and others are still wary of using data from Wikidata on a large scale. We need to build tools and processes to make our data more trustworthy. 2. Improving the user experience around Wikidata. Building Wikidata to the point where it is today was a tremendous technical task that we achieved in a rather short time. This though meant that in places the user experience has not gotten as much attention. We need to make the experience of using Wikidata smoother. 3. Making Wikidata easier to understand. Wikidata is a very geeky and technical project. However to be truly successful it will need to be easy to get the ideas behind it.
- I think that if we have to wait till wikipedians trust our data before
they use it then we may never get there. Rather we need to make it easier for wikipedians to edit our data than it is for them to edit a local infobox so that wikipedians themselves can improve our data.
Yes I don't propose waiting until Wikipedians (and others) trust the data in Wikidata. My point is that from the development side we need to focus on providing tools and fixing existing ones to make it easy for the editor community to create and maintain a high-quality database. This means for example making the revision history of an item actually readable for human beings. (Case in point: https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q24&action=history). There are quite a few of those things that we need to fix and if you stumble upon them please let me know so I can add them to my list. On the editor community side this means for me to push initiatives that increase the number of sourced statements for example.
- This means the emphasis is on improving the user experience around the
wikipedia interface to wikidata. When that is smooth enough then no one will care that the edit interface on wikidata itself is a bit geeky.
Both needs to happen. Wikidata can't be a place that only geeks can understand. While Wikipedia is obviously the use-case that comes first in all decisions there are other users who are going to make use of the data in Wikidata - potentially much more than Wikipedia.
- If most people interact with wikidata via infoboxes on wikipedia and
Vcards on wikivoyage then wikidata becomes much easier to understand - at least the bit of wikidata they interact with. Then users, for the most part, don't need to 'get' the ideas behind the infobox.
They will still need to understand that there is a central repository that they are accessing for example and that their edit is going to affect a lot of other places potentially.
From this the priorities, as I see them, are:
A. Finish the remaining datatypes.
Obviously numbers is a high priority (lacking a UI still but hopefully we can roll this out soon). The other ones a bit less at this point.
B. Develop and test model infoboxes on wikidata ready for wikiprojects in any language to adopt and deploy. (To test these infoboxes we will need to be able to enable wikidata as a wikibase client with a sitelink from every item to its talk page so infoboxes on the talk page work like infoboxes on any other sitelinked page.) Tweak the ontology as necessary to make the infoboxes work.
I don't think building them on Wikidata itself will work. Each Wikipedia has too much of their own ideas of what their infoboxes should look like and how they should behave. What I can imagine and what is relatively easy to do is a page on Wikidata with links to particularly good Wikidata-based infoboxes on various Wikipedias so people can check them there and get ideas. In fact I think this would be great to have.
C. Adapt the wikipedia infobox visual editor so it can edit as 2. above. Deploy the revised visual editor on wikidata first so we can test it before it goes live elsewhere.
Tighter integration with VisualEditor obviously needs to happen. But there is much discussion still to be had about how exactly for example with the VisualEditor team. That's on my list.
This is just my opinion but I offer it as a conversation starter. Is my list very different from yours?
They differ but I don't think too much. Hope that gave some insight.
Cheers Lydia