GerardM wrote:
You deny the argument for Wikicat to need Wikidata. I wonder what you base this on. It is given what it aims to do perfectly reasonable.
For WiktionaryZ you needed two things: Wikidata and some free contents to fill it, which you found in the GEMET vocabulary.
For Wikicat, perhaps it could be based on Wikidata or perhaps on some other technical solution, but it also needs contents, and this contents needs to be free (as in freedom). The dump of the database must be possible to download and reuse for other purposes. My point is that we currently don't have that kind of content. What's lacking is not so much the technical platform, as the contents. The most recent proposal ([[m:Wikicat]]) by Jleybov is based on lifting catalog records from the Library of Congress and other major libraries through a Z39.50 interface. I don't see any contract with the LoC and other libraries that confirms that these data can be reused for any purpose, and I don't see any efforts being made to getting such contracts. Instead, on the m:talk:Wikicat page, I see vague ideas about using data that are available for educational non-profit purposes, and I personally think that is quite insufficient. I don't think it is impossible to solve the licensing issue, but I think it needs to be solved. Just ignoring the legal issue is not good enough.
Whether Wikidata is ready for deployment or not, this is not what's stopping Wikicat at this moment.
Could you talk to kb.nl and ask if their entire catalog can be released into the public domain or under a useful license? That would be a move similar to releasing the GEMET vocabulary, and could provide the starting of Wikicat.