Dear Wikidata people,
I see that there is now a mess in names, and I don't see where (or if) this has been discussed anywhere.
There is the "Wikidata extension" (on which the OmegaWiki dictionary is based) http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Wikidata http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikidata [note: I am a developer of OmegaWiki]
and the "Wikidata project" , using the "Wikibase extension" http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Wikibase http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata
It would be nice if we could rename some of those to make it more consistent... Obviously, "Wikidata" is a wonderful name that everybody wants :-)
I am not opposed to changing the current "Wikidata extension" to something else, if this is possible. I am not sure whether it could be renamed to something like "OmegaWiki extension", since it was not meant to be only used for OmegaWiki, but in practice, there is no other implementation of it. Otherwise, any other name would be fine (Extension:WikiRelationalDB?), but should probably be discussed with Erik (Moeller) who initiated the project.
Concerning collaboration between the two projects, I am not sure why the new-Wikidata is starting from scratch, and not from the old-Wikidata, but there are probably good reasons for that. Would anybody know if, in the future, it would be possible to make OmegaWiki use the new Wikidata instead of the old one? Or should they stay separate projects?
Thanks, Christophe
On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 10:52 AM, Chris Tophe kipmaster@gmail.com wrote:
Dear Wikidata people,
I see that there is now a mess in names, and I don't see where (or if) this has been discussed anywhere.
There is the "Wikidata extension" (on which the OmegaWiki dictionary is based) http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Wikidata http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikidata [note: I am a developer of OmegaWiki]
and the "Wikidata project" , using the "Wikibase extension" http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Wikibase http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata
It would be nice if we could rename some of those to make it more consistent... Obviously, "Wikidata" is a wonderful name that everybody wants :-)
I am not opposed to changing the current "Wikidata extension" to something else, if this is possible. I am not sure whether it could be renamed to something like "OmegaWiki extension", since it was not meant to be only used for OmegaWiki, but in practice, there is no other implementation of it. Otherwise, any other name would be fine (Extension:WikiRelationalDB?), but should probably be discussed with Erik (Moeller) who initiated the project.
We deliberately use Wikibase for the extensions to distinguish the project and the software - think Wikimedia and MediaWiki for example. As to the Wikidata extension being renamed to something else to avoid confusion: That is entirely up to the owners of it (which should be Erik and Gerard) of course.
Concerning collaboration between the two projects, I am not sure why the new-Wikidata is starting from scratch, and not from the old-Wikidata, but there are probably good reasons for that. Would anybody know if, in the future, it would be possible to make OmegaWiki use the new Wikidata instead of the old one? Or should they stay separate projects?
Someone else with more knowledge of the internals of both will have to answer that.
Cheers Lydia
2012/5/9 Lydia Pintscher lydia.pintscher@wikimedia.de
On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 10:52 AM, Chris Tophe kipmaster@gmail.com wrote:> Concerning collaboration between the two projects,
I am not sure why the new-Wikidata is starting from scratch, and not from the old-Wikidata, but there are probably good reasons for that. Would anybody know if, in the future, it would be possible to make
OmegaWiki
use the new Wikidata instead of the old one? Or should they stay separate projects?
(I am no expert on OmegaWiki, so please excuse me and correct me if I make a mistake)
The design and plan for Wikidata/Wikibase (further Wikidata) has a very different focus than OmegaWiki/Wikidata (further OmegaWiki). * Our first aim for Wikidata is to support the Wikipedias (and then also other projects). Thus Wikidata talks about items and their properties, the items being the topics of the respective Wikipedia articles. * OmegaWiki is geared towards replacing the Wiktionaries. Thus OmegaWiki talks about words and their translations, the meaning of the words being given by their defined meaning.
Although both involves structured data, the kind of structure is very different. The workflows are very different. I was checking OmegaWiki again and again while writing the proposal for Wikidata, getting inspired in how things are done there, thinking about the differences in the workflow, etc., but in the end, although I find OmegaWiki a fascinating project (and did so since 2005, when I heard of it for the first time from Gerard) I did not see sufficient overlap in order to investigate the code further.
If I am mistaken, I would be very happy to actually see the features that you think we can steal from OmegaWiki or the other way around. I guess a chat would make sense at some point?
Cheers, Denny
Hoi, The KEY part of OmegaWiki is not so much that it is intended to replace Wiktionary, it is that it has language and concepts at its heart. This is in my opinion the only way to look at things .. consider: When you have a word that needs disambiguation, it follows that the Wikipedia article about that disambiguation is not a concept in its own right. When there is a red link on such a disambiguation page, there is no article on that concept yet.
OmegaWiki is about words and concepts (I intentionally do not use the OmegaWiki terminology here). Because of this it is possible to have a one to many relation. Wikipedia articles are an attribute to the words in different languages associated with a concept.The benefits are great. One of them is that we can and do have translations without a Wikipedia article but with a definition. This means that we can provide basic information on a subject in a language AND people can choose to read a Wikipedia article in a language they know.
Given that it is about concepts, we can and do link Commons to the concept itself and not to Wikipedia. Consider, a rose is a roos in Dutch but it is as beautiful.
And when you ask about datastructures like info boxes.. We do support those too. They are in essence attributes available because a concept is associated with a "category" for instance Germany is a country. As a consequence it can be associated with a capitol, countries and seas bordering them.
Denny I hope Wikidata is similar because without a concept based structure it is indeed Wikipedia based and limited in its capabilities. Thanks, Gerard
On 9 May 2012 15:30, Denny Vrandečić denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de wrote:
2012/5/9 Lydia Pintscher lydia.pintscher@wikimedia.de
On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 10:52 AM, Chris Tophe kipmaster@gmail.com wrote:> Concerning collaboration between the two projects,
I am not sure why the new-Wikidata is starting from scratch, and not
from
the old-Wikidata, but there are probably good reasons for that. Would anybody know if, in the future, it would be possible to make
OmegaWiki
use the new Wikidata instead of the old one? Or should they stay
separate
projects?
(I am no expert on OmegaWiki, so please excuse me and correct me if I make a mistake)
The design and plan for Wikidata/Wikibase (further Wikidata) has a very different focus than OmegaWiki/Wikidata (further OmegaWiki).
- Our first aim for Wikidata is to support the Wikipedias (and then also
other projects). Thus Wikidata talks about items and their properties, the items being the topics of the respective Wikipedia articles.
- OmegaWiki is geared towards replacing the Wiktionaries. Thus OmegaWiki
talks about words and their translations, the meaning of the words being given by their defined meaning.
Although both involves structured data, the kind of structure is very different. The workflows are very different. I was checking OmegaWiki again and again while writing the proposal for Wikidata, getting inspired in how things are done there, thinking about the differences in the workflow, etc., but in the end, although I find OmegaWiki a fascinating project (and did so since 2005, when I heard of it for the first time from Gerard) I did not see sufficient overlap in order to investigate the code further.
If I am mistaken, I would be very happy to actually see the features that you think we can steal from OmegaWiki or the other way around. I guess a chat would make sense at some point?
Cheers, Denny
-- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 2 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
Hi,
I'd like to return to the naming consistency topic, taken into account that the Wikidata project chose deliberately names like Wikibase/Wikibase client to identify their extension, people will get confused by [1] no matter what and assume that [1] extension is related to the Wikidata project when in fact it isn't.
[1] http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/Wikidata/
Cheers,
On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, The KEY part of OmegaWiki is not so much that it is intended to replace Wiktionary, it is that it has language and concepts at its heart. This is in my opinion the only way to look at things .. consider: When you have a word that needs disambiguation, it follows that the Wikipedia article about that disambiguation is not a concept in its own right. When there is a red link on such a disambiguation page, there is no article on that concept yet.
OmegaWiki is about words and concepts (I intentionally do not use the OmegaWiki terminology here). Because of this it is possible to have a one to many relation. Wikipedia articles are an attribute to the words in different languages associated with a concept.The benefits are great. One of them is that we can and do have translations without a Wikipedia article but with a definition. This means that we can provide basic information on a subject in a language AND people can choose to read a Wikipedia article in a language they know.
Given that it is about concepts, we can and do link Commons to the concept itself and not to Wikipedia. Consider, a rose is a roos in Dutch but it is as beautiful.
And when you ask about datastructures like info boxes.. We do support those too. They are in essence attributes available because a concept is associated with a "category" for instance Germany is a country. As a consequence it can be associated with a capitol, countries and seas bordering them.
Denny I hope Wikidata is similar because without a concept based structure it is indeed Wikipedia based and limited in its capabilities. Thanks, Gerard
On 9 May 2012 15:30, Denny Vrandečić denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de wrote:
2012/5/9 Lydia Pintscher lydia.pintscher@wikimedia.de
On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 10:52 AM, Chris Tophe kipmaster@gmail.com wrote:> Concerning collaboration between the two projects,
I am not sure why the new-Wikidata is starting from scratch, and not from the old-Wikidata, but there are probably good reasons for that. Would anybody know if, in the future, it would be possible to make OmegaWiki use the new Wikidata instead of the old one? Or should they stay separate projects?
(I am no expert on OmegaWiki, so please excuse me and correct me if I make a mistake)
The design and plan for Wikidata/Wikibase (further Wikidata) has a very different focus than OmegaWiki/Wikidata (further OmegaWiki).
- Our first aim for Wikidata is to support the Wikipedias (and then also
other projects). Thus Wikidata talks about items and their properties, the items being the topics of the respective Wikipedia articles.
- OmegaWiki is geared towards replacing the Wiktionaries. Thus OmegaWiki
talks about words and their translations, the meaning of the words being given by their defined meaning.
Although both involves structured data, the kind of structure is very different. The workflows are very different. I was checking OmegaWiki again and again while writing the proposal for Wikidata, getting inspired in how things are done there, thinking about the differences in the workflow, etc., but in the end, although I find OmegaWiki a fascinating project (and did so since 2005, when I heard of it for the first time from Gerard) I did not see sufficient overlap in order to investigate the code further.
If I am mistaken, I would be very happy to actually see the features that you think we can steal from OmegaWiki or the other way around. I guess a chat would make sense at some point?
Cheers, Denny
-- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 2 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
Denny Vrandečić <denny.vrandecic@...> writes:
- OmegaWiki is geared towards replacing the Wiktionaries. Thus OmegaWiki talks
about words and their translations, the meaning of the words being given by their defined meaning.
Actually, yes, this is what OmegaWiki is about, but OmegaWiki is only one possible implementation of Wikidata.
The "Wikidata extension" is in fact more generally about replacing a standard wiki page, where you write everything in one field, with a structured data wiki page, where you have many fields of different types (text, checkboxes, comboboxes, etc. we have all this at OmegaWiki), and where each field is stored in a separate database table.
So, a list of languages/translations in omegawiki could be easily replaced by a list of languages/interwikilink.
However, I must admit that the Wikidata code is very complex and poorly documented, so that it might be actually faster to do everything from scratch for your needs. Furthermore, since OmegaWiki has been the only implementation of Wikidata, some work would be needed to separate what is actually OW-specific from the rest (which is why I am interested in the other direction of contribution, i.e. adapting Wikibase for OmegaWiki, if this is possible).
I'll try connecting to chatzilla on evenings or week-ends.
Cheers, Christophe
Hi Chris
AS someone who as worked with the old Wikidata code, I must say I very much prefer to start over. The old code is convoluted and scales poorly.
The approach of the new Wikibase extension is much cleaner. Some advantages:
* we can use the storage and versioning facilities of mediawiki without any changes, and still have efficient mechanisms for querying data.
* We can easily deal with complex, nested data structures
* We have a powerful but well-defined data model for representing concepts ("items" in wikibase terminology). Among other things, source references for any claim are an integral part of the system.
* Properties and data schemans can be maintained on-wiki, without any need for changes to the configuration or database.
* We are free to implement a federation mechanism (updates for "client" sites) the way that best fits our needs.
We have considered both Wikidata/OmegaWiki and Semantic MediaWiki as a base to build on, but decided to implement the core of Wikibase from scratch, mainly for the above reasons.
-- daniel
On 10.05.2012 11:28, Chris Tophe wrote:
Denny Vrandečić <denny.vrandecic@...> writes:
- OmegaWiki is geared towards replacing the Wiktionaries. Thus OmegaWiki talks
about words and their translations, the meaning of the words being given by their defined meaning.
Actually, yes, this is what OmegaWiki is about, but OmegaWiki is only one possible implementation of Wikidata.
The "Wikidata extension" is in fact more generally about replacing a standard wiki page, where you write everything in one field, with a structured data wiki page, where you have many fields of different types (text, checkboxes, comboboxes, etc. we have all this at OmegaWiki), and where each field is stored in a separate database table.
So, a list of languages/translations in omegawiki could be easily replaced by a list of languages/interwikilink.
However, I must admit that the Wikidata code is very complex and poorly documented, so that it might be actually faster to do everything from scratch for your needs. Furthermore, since OmegaWiki has been the only implementation of Wikidata, some work would be needed to separate what is actually OW-specific from the rest (which is why I am interested in the other direction of contribution, i.e. adapting Wikibase for OmegaWiki, if this is possible).
I'll try connecting to chatzilla on evenings or week-ends.
Cheers, Christophe
Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l