Erik Moeller wrote:
Gerard,
first of all, pursuing cooperations like this will always be very slow as long as it's a completely volunteer-driven effort. I think Wikimedia absolutely needs several people who can work on such matters full-time. Of course, you could ask the organization you have spoken to if they would be willing to fund the preparation itself (technical evaluation, research, planning, negotiation).
However, I also think we will have a much better negotiation position once Wikidata is past the prototype stage. Getting international metadata for Wikipedia for free is indeed a fascinating prospect, but I don't see it as an issue we need to address *right now*.
Best,
Erik
Erik, This is the moment when a Dutch organisation asked to have our content in order to add metadata. Therefore this is the time we have to formulate an answer. When we do not, the opportunity to maximise the return of this effort will go past us. You are 100% correct that this will need Wikidata and we do agree that having more people working on Wikidata and Ultimate Wiktionary is a good thing.
This organisation needs to set up its infrastructure to host the Wikipedia content and add the IEEE LOM data, it will not benefit from similar efforts when it goes it alone. It is therefore in its own intrest to cooperate with us to have us host this data. The timeline for this project is not only for us to decide as we are not driving this effort so I disagree, we need to address this now and work out what the optimum timeline is.
Thanks, GerardM