I am truly and deeply amazed by the Wikidata community.
A bit more than a year ago, I moved to Berlin and assembled a fantastic team of people to help realize a vision. Today, we have collected millions of statements, geographical locations, points in time, persons and their connections, creative works, and species - and every single minute, hundred of edits are improving and changing this knowledge base that anyone can edit, that anyone can use for free.
So much more is left to do, and the further we go, the more opportunities open. More datatypes - links are on the horizon, quantities will be a major step. I can hardly wait to see Wikidata answer queries. And there are so many questions unanswered - what does the community need in order to maintain Wikidata best? Which tools, reports, special pages are needed? What is the right balance between automation and flexibility?
Besides Wikipedia, Wikidata can be used in many other places. We just started the conversations about sister projects, but also external projects are expected to become smarter thanks to Wikidata. I expect tools and libraries and patterns for these type of uses will emerge in the next few months, and applications will become more intelligent and act more informed, powered by Wikidata.
A project like Wikidata needs in its early days a strong, sometimes stubborn leader in order to accelerate its growth. But at some point a project gathers sufficient momentum, and the community moves faster than any single leader could lead, and suddenly they might become bottlenecks, and instead of accelerating the project the might be stalling it.
Wikidata has reached the point where it is time for me to step down. The Wikidata development team in Berlin will, in the upcoming weeks and months, set up processes that allow the community, that I learned to trust even more during that year, to take over the reigns. I will stay with the team until the end of September, and then become again what I have been for the last decade - a normal and proud member of the Wikimedia communities.
I also would like to use this chance to reveal a secret. Wikidata items are identified by a Q, followed by a number, Wikidata properties by a P, followed by a number. Whereas it is obvious that the P stands for property, some of you have asked - why Q? My answer was, that Q not only looks cool, but also makes for great identifiers, and hopefully a certain set of people will some day associate a number like Q9036 with something they can look up in Wikidata. But the true reason is that Q is the first letter of the name of the woman I love. We married last year, among all that Wikidata craziness, and I am thankful to her for the patience she had while I was discussing whether to show wiki identifiers or language keys, what bugs to prioritize when, and which calendar systems were used in Sweden.
I will continue to be a community member with Wikidata. My new day job, though, will be at Google, and from there I hope to continue to effectively further our goals towards a world where everyone has access to the sum of all knowledge.
Sincerely, Denny Vrandečić
That was nice, Denny. The WD team has really built something grandious from sratch. And it was nice to meet you in D.C. Thanks for all, and good luck for the future!
Hi Denny,
Thanks for sharing both your personal story and for your contributions to the Wiki community. Belated congratulations on your wedding with Q and best wishes on your new role at Google!
Best Regards, Alex
On Jul 11, 2013, at 9:29 AM, "Denny Vrandečić" <denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.demailto:denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de> wrote:
I am truly and deeply amazed by the Wikidata community.
A bit more than a year ago, I moved to Berlin and assembled a fantastic team of people to help realize a vision. Today, we have collected millions of statements, geographical locations, points in time, persons and their connections, creative works, and species - and every single minute, hundred of edits are improving and changing this knowledge base that anyone can edit, that anyone can use for free.
So much more is left to do, and the further we go, the more opportunities open. More datatypes - links are on the horizon, quantities will be a major step. I can hardly wait to see Wikidata answer queries. And there are so many questions unanswered - what does the community need in order to maintain Wikidata best? Which tools, reports, special pages are needed? What is the right balance between automation and flexibility?
Besides Wikipedia, Wikidata can be used in many other places. We just started the conversations about sister projects, but also external projects are expected to become smarter thanks to Wikidata. I expect tools and libraries and patterns for these type of uses will emerge in the next few months, and applications will become more intelligent and act more informed, powered by Wikidata.
A project like Wikidata needs in its early days a strong, sometimes stubborn leader in order to accelerate its growth. But at some point a project gathers sufficient momentum, and the community moves faster than any single leader could lead, and suddenly they might become bottlenecks, and instead of accelerating the project the might be stalling it.
Wikidata has reached the point where it is time for me to step down. The Wikidata development team in Berlin will, in the upcoming weeks and months, set up processes that allow the community, that I learned to trust even more during that year, to take over the reigns. I will stay with the team until the end of September, and then become again what I have been for the last decade - a normal and proud member of the Wikimedia communities.
I also would like to use this chance to reveal a secret. Wikidata items are identified by a Q, followed by a number, Wikidata properties by a P, followed by a number. Whereas it is obvious that the P stands for property, some of you have asked - why Q? My answer was, that Q not only looks cool, but also makes for great identifiers, and hopefully a certain set of people will some day associate a number like Q9036 with something they can look up in Wikidata. But the true reason is that Q is the first letter of the name of the woman I love. We married last year, among all that Wikidata craziness, and I am thankful to her for the patience she had while I was discussing whether to show wiki identifiers or language keys, what bugs to prioritize when, and which calendar systems were used in Sweden.
I will continue to be a community member with Wikidata. My new day job, though, will be at Google, and from there I hope to continue to effectively further our goals towards a world where everyone has access to the sum of all knowledge.
Sincerely, Denny Vrandečić
-- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 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.orgmailto:Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
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2013/7/11 Denny Vrandečić denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de: [...]
Besides Wikipedia, Wikidata can be used in many other places. We just started the conversations about sister projects, but also external projects are expected to become smarter thanks to Wikidata. I expect tools and libraries and patterns for these type of uses will emerge in the next few months, and applications will become more intelligent and act more informed, powered by Wikidata.
[...]
Dear Denny,
I was in Haifa when there was the very first announce of Wikidata, and I was in Washington when Wikidata was definitely announced as a project.
I still remember my excitement when I asked if the coats of arms of municipalities and states and whatever could have been put into Wikidata, and you guys said "yes, they will". I was so naive at that moment that I couldn't have imagined what this project would have turned into, yet it was this little answer to convince me to join the community.
Now, along with some fellow wikipedians/wikimedians, we're in talks with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istituto_Centrale_per_il_Catalogo_Unico, the Italian institution that oversees a large part of the Italian public and private libraries. They are willing to give us their data, but also to establish a more thorough cooperation, involving librarians to contribute to Wikidata and the other Wikimedia projects.
We could have set up a cooperation with the institute anyway, but Wikidata was the perfect key project to make this cooperation come true, because they were fascinated by the work on the authority control we're doing with VIAF and other institutions. If we managed to reach this stage, it was also because of your work. So, I'd like to thank you and all the Wikidata developers for having helped us with that.
Good luck with your new work at Google and good luck with your family. :) Hope to see you at Hong Kong.
Cheers,
Dear Denny,
Thanks for your great letter, and I'm sorry to learn that you're leaving Wikidata, and as one of its 3 core developers as it was launched over the past months, with all its major contributions to Wikipedia/Wikimedia and online knowledge co-generation, multilingually! Hearty congratulations, though, in your new position at Google, and I hope you can bring the logic of Ps and Qs computationally, and data-wise, into that great coding company. (Let's stay in communication vis-a-vis World University and School, - which is, as you know, like Wikipedia with MIT OCW, with free, online university degrees planned in many languages, - and the many enjoyable coding possibilities therein :).
With friendly regards, Scott
On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 8:35 AM, Luca Martinelli martinelliluca@gmail.comwrote:
2013/7/11 Denny Vrandečić denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de: [...]
Besides Wikipedia, Wikidata can be used in many other places. We just started the conversations about sister projects, but also external
projects
are expected to become smarter thanks to Wikidata. I expect tools and libraries and patterns for these type of uses will emerge in the next few months, and applications will become more intelligent and act more
informed,
powered by Wikidata.
[...]
Dear Denny,
I was in Haifa when there was the very first announce of Wikidata, and I was in Washington when Wikidata was definitely announced as a project.
I still remember my excitement when I asked if the coats of arms of municipalities and states and whatever could have been put into Wikidata, and you guys said "yes, they will". I was so naive at that moment that I couldn't have imagined what this project would have turned into, yet it was this little answer to convince me to join the community.
Now, along with some fellow wikipedians/wikimedians, we're in talks with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istituto_Centrale_per_il_Catalogo_Unico, the Italian institution that oversees a large part of the Italian public and private libraries. They are willing to give us their data, but also to establish a more thorough cooperation, involving librarians to contribute to Wikidata and the other Wikimedia projects.
We could have set up a cooperation with the institute anyway, but Wikidata was the perfect key project to make this cooperation come true, because they were fascinated by the work on the authority control we're doing with VIAF and other institutions. If we managed to reach this stage, it was also because of your work. So, I'd like to thank you and all the Wikidata developers for having helped us with that.
Good luck with your new work at Google and good luck with your family. :) Hope to see you at Hong Kong.
Cheers,
-- Luca "Sannita" Martinelli http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Sannita
Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
Denny,
Thank you for doing so much to make Wikidata a reality.
The Wikimedia community had been waiting for years for an integrated structured data framework, and your long-term commitment to a vision has been a major reason we now have that. To me and I think many other contributors, it feels like the vapor of that nebulous project known as the Semantic Web is condensing in the structures taking form at Wikidata. That fact that it is doing so with strong support for knowledge diversity is important and to your credit.
The few times we've interacted have been enough to give me food for thought for quite a while. Your broader writing about Wikidata is illuminating and I hope you continue to share your thoughts on the best directions for the project.
Best wishes with Google, and Q!
Regards, Eric
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Emw
On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 9:28 AM, Denny Vrandečić < denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de> wrote:
I am truly and deeply amazed by the Wikidata community.
A bit more than a year ago, I moved to Berlin and assembled a fantastic team of people to help realize a vision. Today, we have collected millions of statements, geographical locations, points in time, persons and their connections, creative works, and species - and every single minute, hundred of edits are improving and changing this knowledge base that anyone can edit, that anyone can use for free.
So much more is left to do, and the further we go, the more opportunities open. More datatypes - links are on the horizon, quantities will be a major step. I can hardly wait to see Wikidata answer queries. And there are so many questions unanswered - what does the community need in order to maintain Wikidata best? Which tools, reports, special pages are needed? What is the right balance between automation and flexibility?
Besides Wikipedia, Wikidata can be used in many other places. We just started the conversations about sister projects, but also external projects are expected to become smarter thanks to Wikidata. I expect tools and libraries and patterns for these type of uses will emerge in the next few months, and applications will become more intelligent and act more informed, powered by Wikidata.
A project like Wikidata needs in its early days a strong, sometimes stubborn leader in order to accelerate its growth. But at some point a project gathers sufficient momentum, and the community moves faster than any single leader could lead, and suddenly they might become bottlenecks, and instead of accelerating the project the might be stalling it.
Wikidata has reached the point where it is time for me to step down. The Wikidata development team in Berlin will, in the upcoming weeks and months, set up processes that allow the community, that I learned to trust even more during that year, to take over the reigns. I will stay with the team until the end of September, and then become again what I have been for the last decade - a normal and proud member of the Wikimedia communities.
I also would like to use this chance to reveal a secret. Wikidata items are identified by a Q, followed by a number, Wikidata properties by a P, followed by a number. Whereas it is obvious that the P stands for property, some of you have asked - why Q? My answer was, that Q not only looks cool, but also makes for great identifiers, and hopefully a certain set of people will some day associate a number like Q9036 with something they can look up in Wikidata. But the true reason is that Q is the first letter of the name of the woman I love. We married last year, among all that Wikidata craziness, and I am thankful to her for the patience she had while I was discussing whether to show wiki identifiers or language keys, what bugs to prioritize when, and which calendar systems were used in Sweden.
I will continue to be a community member with Wikidata. My new day job, though, will be at Google, and from there I hope to continue to effectively further our goals towards a world where everyone has access to the sum of all knowledge.
Sincerely, Denny Vrandečić
-- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 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
Dear Denny,
I am very happy to hear you're personally achieving the next great thing in your career but you will be sorely missed at Wikidata. I am sure you will be able to help Google integrate all things Wikidata.
Keep in touch and let me know when you're at Google HQ in MTV - see you around!
Best wishes, Alolita
On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 9:21 PM, emw emw.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Denny,
Thank you for doing so much to make Wikidata a reality.
The Wikimedia community had been waiting for years for an integrated structured data framework, and your long-term commitment to a vision has been a major reason we now have that. To me and I think many other contributors, it feels like the vapor of that nebulous project known as the Semantic Web is condensing in the structures taking form at Wikidata. That fact that it is doing so with strong support for knowledge diversity is important and to your credit.
The few times we've interacted have been enough to give me food for thought for quite a while. Your broader writing about Wikidata is illuminating and I hope you continue to share your thoughts on the best directions for the project.
Best wishes with Google, and Q!
Regards, Eric
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Emw
On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 9:28 AM, Denny Vrandečić < denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de> wrote:
I am truly and deeply amazed by the Wikidata community.
A bit more than a year ago, I moved to Berlin and assembled a fantastic team of people to help realize a vision. Today, we have collected millions of statements, geographical locations, points in time, persons and their connections, creative works, and species - and every single minute, hundred of edits are improving and changing this knowledge base that anyone can edit, that anyone can use for free.
So much more is left to do, and the further we go, the more opportunities open. More datatypes - links are on the horizon, quantities will be a major step. I can hardly wait to see Wikidata answer queries. And there are so many questions unanswered - what does the community need in order to maintain Wikidata best? Which tools, reports, special pages are needed? What is the right balance between automation and flexibility?
Besides Wikipedia, Wikidata can be used in many other places. We just started the conversations about sister projects, but also external projects are expected to become smarter thanks to Wikidata. I expect tools and libraries and patterns for these type of uses will emerge in the next few months, and applications will become more intelligent and act more informed, powered by Wikidata.
A project like Wikidata needs in its early days a strong, sometimes stubborn leader in order to accelerate its growth. But at some point a project gathers sufficient momentum, and the community moves faster than any single leader could lead, and suddenly they might become bottlenecks, and instead of accelerating the project the might be stalling it.
Wikidata has reached the point where it is time for me to step down. The Wikidata development team in Berlin will, in the upcoming weeks and months, set up processes that allow the community, that I learned to trust even more during that year, to take over the reigns. I will stay with the team until the end of September, and then become again what I have been for the last decade - a normal and proud member of the Wikimedia communities.
I also would like to use this chance to reveal a secret. Wikidata items are identified by a Q, followed by a number, Wikidata properties by a P, followed by a number. Whereas it is obvious that the P stands for property, some of you have asked - why Q? My answer was, that Q not only looks cool, but also makes for great identifiers, and hopefully a certain set of people will some day associate a number like Q9036 with something they can look up in Wikidata. But the true reason is that Q is the first letter of the name of the woman I love. We married last year, among all that Wikidata craziness, and I am thankful to her for the patience she had while I was discussing whether to show wiki identifiers or language keys, what bugs to prioritize when, and which calendar systems were used in Sweden.
I will continue to be a community member with Wikidata. My new day job, though, will be at Google, and from there I hope to continue to effectively further our goals towards a world where everyone has access to the sum of all knowledge.
Sincerely, Denny Vrandečić
-- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 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
Dear Denny,
I am sorry to hear you are leaving. You have done a great job with Wikidata. Congratulation with Q (a late congratulation) and the new position.
best Finn Årup Nielsen
On 07/11/2013 03:28 PM, Denny Vrandečić wrote:
I am truly and deeply amazed by the Wikidata community.
A bit more than a year ago, I moved to Berlin and assembled a fantastic team of people to help realize a vision. Today, we have collected millions of statements, geographical locations, points in time, persons and their connections, creative works, and species - and every single minute, hundred of edits are improving and changing this knowledge base that anyone can edit, that anyone can use for free.
So much more is left to do, and the further we go, the more opportunities open. More datatypes - links are on the horizon, quantities will be a major step. I can hardly wait to see Wikidata answer queries. And there are so many questions unanswered - what does the community need in order to maintain Wikidata best? Which tools, reports, special pages are needed? What is the right balance between automation and flexibility?
Besides Wikipedia, Wikidata can be used in many other places. We just started the conversations about sister projects, but also external projects are expected to become smarter thanks to Wikidata. I expect tools and libraries and patterns for these type of uses will emerge in the next few months, and applications will become more intelligent and act more informed, powered by Wikidata.
A project like Wikidata needs in its early days a strong, sometimes stubborn leader in order to accelerate its growth. But at some point a project gathers sufficient momentum, and the community moves faster than any single leader could lead, and suddenly they might become bottlenecks, and instead of accelerating the project the might be stalling it.
Wikidata has reached the point where it is time for me to step down. The Wikidata development team in Berlin will, in the upcoming weeks and months, set up processes that allow the community, that I learned to trust even more during that year, to take over the reigns. I will stay with the team until the end of September, and then become again what I have been for the last decade - a normal and proud member of the Wikimedia communities.
I also would like to use this chance to reveal a secret. Wikidata items are identified by a Q, followed by a number, Wikidata properties by a P, followed by a number. Whereas it is obvious that the P stands for property, some of you have asked - why Q? My answer was, that Q not only looks cool, but also makes for great identifiers, and hopefully a certain set of people will some day associate a number like Q9036 with something they can look up in Wikidata. But the true reason is that Q is the first letter of the name of the woman I love. We married last year, among all that Wikidata craziness, and I am thankful to her for the patience she had while I was discussing whether to show wiki identifiers or language keys, what bugs to prioritize when, and which calendar systems were used in Sweden.
I will continue to be a community member with Wikidata. My new day job, though, will be at Google, and from there I hope to continue to effectively further our goals towards a world where everyone has access to the sum of all knowledge.
Sincerely, Denny Vrandečić
-- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 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 Denny,
Sad that the open source world could not keep you fully, but we must be very happy for the time we had you pushing Wikidata to become better and better. Hopefully Wikidata will become a central data hub and the neutral ground where Google and other companies can contribute to the project as now happens with the Linux kernel.
In any case, good luck to you and Q in your new life!
Micru
On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 9:28 AM, Denny Vrandečić < denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de> wrote:
I am truly and deeply amazed by the Wikidata community.
A bit more than a year ago, I moved to Berlin and assembled a fantastic team of people to help realize a vision. Today, we have collected millions of statements, geographical locations, points in time, persons and their connections, creative works, and species - and every single minute, hundred of edits are improving and changing this knowledge base that anyone can edit, that anyone can use for free.
So much more is left to do, and the further we go, the more opportunities open. More datatypes - links are on the horizon, quantities will be a major step. I can hardly wait to see Wikidata answer queries. And there are so many questions unanswered - what does the community need in order to maintain Wikidata best? Which tools, reports, special pages are needed? What is the right balance between automation and flexibility?
Besides Wikipedia, Wikidata can be used in many other places. We just started the conversations about sister projects, but also external projects are expected to become smarter thanks to Wikidata. I expect tools and libraries and patterns for these type of uses will emerge in the next few months, and applications will become more intelligent and act more informed, powered by Wikidata.
A project like Wikidata needs in its early days a strong, sometimes stubborn leader in order to accelerate its growth. But at some point a project gathers sufficient momentum, and the community moves faster than any single leader could lead, and suddenly they might become bottlenecks, and instead of accelerating the project the might be stalling it.
Wikidata has reached the point where it is time for me to step down. The Wikidata development team in Berlin will, in the upcoming weeks and months, set up processes that allow the community, that I learned to trust even more during that year, to take over the reigns. I will stay with the team until the end of September, and then become again what I have been for the last decade - a normal and proud member of the Wikimedia communities.
I also would like to use this chance to reveal a secret. Wikidata items are identified by a Q, followed by a number, Wikidata properties by a P, followed by a number. Whereas it is obvious that the P stands for property, some of you have asked - why Q? My answer was, that Q not only looks cool, but also makes for great identifiers, and hopefully a certain set of people will some day associate a number like Q9036 with something they can look up in Wikidata. But the true reason is that Q is the first letter of the name of the woman I love. We married last year, among all that Wikidata craziness, and I am thankful to her for the patience she had while I was discussing whether to show wiki identifiers or language keys, what bugs to prioritize when, and which calendar systems were used in Sweden.
I will continue to be a community member with Wikidata. My new day job, though, will be at Google, and from there I hope to continue to effectively further our goals towards a world where everyone has access to the sum of all knowledge.
Sincerely, Denny Vrandečić
-- Project director Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 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