Hello there. I have been an active and vocal supporter of Wikidata since almost the day it went live, and after giving Phase II a legitimate chance, I have to say that in my opinion the decision to deploy Phase II with only a small number of the expected features has been a massive mistake. Yes, I understand that the project was losing momentum and that several people commented that they felt that there was nothing to do on the project before Phase II hit, however the partial release has caused considerable confusion, and worse, has caused people to make decisions *based on what is available now* as opposed to based on *what would be the best choice in the long term*.
It would have been one thing if Phase II were released with 80% of its projected features and an official list from the developers of the things that were left out. Instead we got what I have to guess is around 10% of the projected features, and if there's an official list of things that are missing or a timeline of when they're going to appear, I haven't seen it.
I also have to question the timing of the release, bringing Phase II live just before Wikidata hits English Wikipedia. Was this done on purpose to try and bring over some of the Wikipedia editors? If not, the timing is awful. Nothing of this scale and level of technical sophistication ever gets deployed to English Wikipedia smoothly, and I think that the near future is going to show that the English Wikipedia deployment is going to be competing with the Phase II rollout for the time of the coders, who will need to fix bugs in both areas.
I'm sorry for being so pessimistic, but I really do feel let down by this release. It's like being told that you're going to watch a feature film and then only getting the official trailer. The trailer is good, but it's not what people were expecting and it's not particularly valuable on its own.
I look forward to any response that the Wikidata staff or the community might have to this.
Sven
Sven, I see your point, since I also spent some time creating data items for a while and then stopped. I disagree that this means that I lost interest. I am still very interested, and I was also somewhat puzzled by the new look. I disagree though that this release causes any more confusion than the first one did. Of course every release will go slower than projected, and of course it will have bugs and cause confusion. I also see no problem with the English Wikipedia implementation, because the consensus (as far as I understand it) is that there will be no automatic edits to the English Wikipedia resulting from Wikidata.
I think you need to see this as a second implementation of Wikimedia Commons. That implementation had no automatic edits to the English Wikipedia either, though bots were developed to ease this migration as a way to seed Wikimedia Commons with images that could be used by more than one language. I expect something similar to occur with Wikidata.
Not all local images on the English Wikipedia have been migrated to Wikimedia Commons yet. Many of them never will be (these are the "fair use images"), but many are just not seen enough or have too little metadata to do this responsibly.
Jane
2013/2/8, Sven Manguard svenmanguard@gmail.com:
Hello there. I have been an active and vocal supporter of Wikidata since almost the day it went live, and after giving Phase II a legitimate chance, I have to say that in my opinion the decision to deploy Phase II with only a small number of the expected features has been a massive mistake. Yes, I understand that the project was losing momentum and that several people commented that they felt that there was nothing to do on the project before Phase II hit, however the partial release has caused considerable confusion, and worse, has caused people to make decisions *based on what is available now* as opposed to based on *what would be the best choice in the long term*.
It would have been one thing if Phase II were released with 80% of its projected features and an official list from the developers of the things that were left out. Instead we got what I have to guess is around 10% of the projected features, and if there's an official list of things that are missing or a timeline of when they're going to appear, I haven't seen it.
I also have to question the timing of the release, bringing Phase II live just before Wikidata hits English Wikipedia. Was this done on purpose to try and bring over some of the Wikipedia editors? If not, the timing is awful. Nothing of this scale and level of technical sophistication ever gets deployed to English Wikipedia smoothly, and I think that the near future is going to show that the English Wikipedia deployment is going to be competing with the Phase II rollout for the time of the coders, who will need to fix bugs in both areas.
I'm sorry for being so pessimistic, but I really do feel let down by this release. It's like being told that you're going to watch a feature film and then only getting the official trailer. The trailer is good, but it's not what people were expecting and it's not particularly valuable on its own.
I look forward to any response that the Wikidata staff or the community might have to this.
Sven
Hoi, When Commons started, you could not use pictures from Commons on any Wiki. There are advantages to provide functionality once it is available. It allow for it to grow into its own being. When you provide functionality all in one go, it will take much longer to get anything at all and there will be little or no user involvement in what it looks like.
Providing functionality as it becomes available is something MediaWiki is known for. It is a good thing. Thanks, GerardM
On 8 February 2013 10:30, Jane Darnell jane023@gmail.com wrote:
Sven, I see your point, since I also spent some time creating data items for a while and then stopped. I disagree that this means that I lost interest. I am still very interested, and I was also somewhat puzzled by the new look. I disagree though that this release causes any more confusion than the first one did. Of course every release will go slower than projected, and of course it will have bugs and cause confusion. I also see no problem with the English Wikipedia implementation, because the consensus (as far as I understand it) is that there will be no automatic edits to the English Wikipedia resulting from Wikidata.
I think you need to see this as a second implementation of Wikimedia Commons. That implementation had no automatic edits to the English Wikipedia either, though bots were developed to ease this migration as a way to seed Wikimedia Commons with images that could be used by more than one language. I expect something similar to occur with Wikidata.
Not all local images on the English Wikipedia have been migrated to Wikimedia Commons yet. Many of them never will be (these are the "fair use images"), but many are just not seen enough or have too little metadata to do this responsibly.
Jane
2013/2/8, Sven Manguard svenmanguard@gmail.com:
Hello there. I have been an active and vocal supporter of Wikidata since almost the day it went live, and after giving Phase II a legitimate
chance,
I have to say that in my opinion the decision to deploy Phase II with
only
a small number of the expected features has been a massive mistake. Yes,
I
understand that the project was losing momentum and that several people commented that they felt that there was nothing to do on the project
before
Phase II hit, however the partial release has caused considerable confusion, and worse, has caused people to make decisions *based on what
is
available now* as opposed to based on *what would be the best choice in
the
long term*.
It would have been one thing if Phase II were released with 80% of its projected features and an official list from the developers of the things that were left out. Instead we got what I have to guess is around 10% of the projected features, and if there's an official list of things that
are
missing or a timeline of when they're going to appear, I haven't seen it.
I also have to question the timing of the release, bringing Phase II live just before Wikidata hits English Wikipedia. Was this done on purpose to try and bring over some of the Wikipedia editors? If not, the timing is awful. Nothing of this scale and level of technical sophistication ever gets deployed to English Wikipedia smoothly, and I think that the near future is going to show that the English Wikipedia deployment is going to be competing with the Phase II rollout for the time of the coders, who
will
need to fix bugs in both areas.
I'm sorry for being so pessimistic, but I really do feel let down by this release. It's like being told that you're going to watch a feature film
and
then only getting the official trailer. The trailer is good, but it's not what people were expecting and it's not particularly valuable on its own.
I look forward to any response that the Wikidata staff or the community might have to this.
Sven
Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
Sven,
thank you for your honest opinion, and I know that you are not alone with it - but I also heard a lot of people express excitement and joy about the deployment, and based on the activity it seems that a lot of people like it. We consider ourselves happy to be part of an intelligent and critical, and at the same time sympathetic community.
I fully agree that the first deployment of Phase II functionality was early. A lot of features are missing, as we have repeatedly communicated.
Was the deployment too early? That I disagree with. It is widely accepted wisdom for software projects to "release early, release often". I think that is very valid advice, and I decided to follow it with the project. This allows us to see if some of our basic assumptions "work". This allows us to test a few things before we fully commit to them and spend big amounts of effort without any reality check.
The project plan as a whole was planned like this. Basically language links are just a test-run for some of the technology we will need in order to implement Phase II. Many back-end features -- the propagation of data from a central repository to the Wikipedias, the way recent changes deals with this, the scalability of some of our assumptions -- are equivalent in Phase I and II. Phase I was always implemented with Phase II in mind. We are doing the same thing now. We implement some features -- namely statements per se, references for statements -- but with a limited set of data sets and with some major limitations. But these will get expanded over time.
Compare it with another project like the Visual Editor. It is deployed to the English Wikipedia. Plenty of features are still missing. But only with their current deployment schedule can the VE team gather crucial data for their further development. The main difference is that VE is an opt-in feature -- statements in Wikidata are not, they are there, in your face.
I regard a project like Wikidata not as a software development project. It is a growing, living socio-technical system, and in this case actually it is one embedded in an even bigger such system, the Wikimedia movement as a whole. We are developing technical features that we think will lead all of us towards our common goals, and then we watch how the communities adapt to them, which social rules they build on them, which technical developments of their own are built on top of ours. We (as the development team) are part of this ecosystem, and we (as all of us Wikimedians) are growing together. Technical possibilities shape the rules the Wikidata editor community agrees on, and the actual usage of the system and your feedback shapes and prioritizes the future technical development that we plan and undergo as the development team.
I also see that some decisions of the community are based on the currently available features, but i do not think that this is problematic -- because I am very confident that future new features will continue to shape new rules and that the existing ones will be revisited and updated accordingly.
The timing of the deployment of phase II to wikidata.org has nothing to do with the deployment of phase I to the English Wikipedia, which is currently scheduled for Monday. We simply deployed features when they are deemed ready. We do not plan features ahead with the intention to keep interest high, or in order to win editors from other communities, etc. Also, we regard phase II only as sufficiently finished when it is actually deployed to the Wikipedias. And this, obviously, still requires a much better support for references and a bigger number of data types. Also, so far there is no reason to believe that there will be any major problems revealed once we deploy to the English Wikipedia.
I regard your feedback as very important, and I am thankful for it. I understand that everyone would like to have all the features immediately. But I disagree with you on the point that we should not have deployed last Monday. We were working very hard in order to be able to deploy on Monday, and not wait even longer, and we are very proud with how smoothly it went - fully conscious of the limitations of the current state. The situation will soon improve, and we would like to stay a project for now that deploys new features in a comparably quick succession.
After this explanation I hope that I have the support of the Wikidata community to continue in this spirit.
Cheers, Denny
2013/2/8 Sven Manguard svenmanguard@gmail.com
Hello there. I have been an active and vocal supporter of Wikidata since almost the day it went live, and after giving Phase II a legitimate chance, I have to say that in my opinion the decision to deploy Phase II with only a small number of the expected features has been a massive mistake. Yes, I understand that the project was losing momentum and that several people commented that they felt that there was nothing to do on the project before Phase II hit, however the partial release has caused considerable confusion, and worse, has caused people to make decisions *based on what is available now* as opposed to based on *what would be the best choice in the long term*.
It would have been one thing if Phase II were released with 80% of its projected features and an official list from the developers of the things that were left out. Instead we got what I have to guess is around 10% of the projected features, and if there's an official list of things that are missing or a timeline of when they're going to appear, I haven't seen it.
I also have to question the timing of the release, bringing Phase II live just before Wikidata hits English Wikipedia. Was this done on purpose to try and bring over some of the Wikipedia editors? If not, the timing is awful. Nothing of this scale and level of technical sophistication ever gets deployed to English Wikipedia smoothly, and I think that the near future is going to show that the English Wikipedia deployment is going to be competing with the Phase II rollout for the time of the coders, who will need to fix bugs in both areas.
I'm sorry for being so pessimistic, but I really do feel let down by this release. It's like being told that you're going to watch a feature film and then only getting the official trailer. The trailer is good, but it's not what people were expecting and it's not particularly valuable on its own.
I look forward to any response that the Wikidata staff or the community might have to this.
Sven
Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l