I'd highly recommend other volunteers attend this. Wikidata's a very exciting project and it's evolving rapidly, but the interface is different from other Wikimedia wikis. Not harder, just different. Even if you're familiar with both wiki editing and databases, there are new skills to learn. Then again, because it's a different interface, it puts newcomers and experienced wiki contributors on a more equal footing.

Since attending last year's workshop I've made some, but not a lot of, edits to Wikidata, but I am in a much better position to explain and evangelise Wikidata to researchers, librarians and academics.

To those of us involved with it professionally, it's obvious that machine-readable linked data is centrality to what the web is meant to be (including in Sir Tim's design), and plays an central role in making knowledge *freely* available, including freeing up knowledge in other databases. This isn't at all clear, though, to the vast majority of the population who don't have those nerdy jobs, and that includes the vast majority of Wikipedians. So I think it's good for Wikipedians to familiarise themselves with Wikidata (or DBPedia) as a concrete example of what the semantic, machine-readable web can be: to think of the web as interlinked data, not just interlinked documents.

Magnus' Reasonator is a thing of beauty and an educational joy - it's definitely worth spend some time playing with it. Even better to speak to the man himself!

On 24 March 2014 15:26, Katie Chan <katie.chan@wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:

Do you want to learn more about Wikidata? On Saturday 26 April, Wikimedia UK is organising a one day workshop focusing on Wikidata, its tools ecosystem, and what you can do with it. More details and registration can be found at <https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Wikidata_workshop_2014>.

Regards,

Katie

--

Katie Chan

Volunteer Support Organiser

Wikimedia UK

+44 (0) 20 7065 0990

+44 (0) 7885 980 534

Wikimedia UK is a Charitable Company registered in England and Wales.

Registered Company No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513.

Registered Office: 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom.

Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).

Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

--

Dr Martin L Poulter
Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador, July 2013 - April 2014

Wikipedia contributor         http://enwp.org/User:MartinPoulter
Volunteer, Wikimedia UK   http://wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MartinPoulter
Musician                          http://soundcloud.com/martin-poulter
                                       http://myspace.com/comapilot
Person                             http://infobomb.org/

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk