On 10.07.2012 16:47, jmcclure@hypergrove.com wrote:
I am concerned about the performance impact of every wikipedia calling an API for each property that it wishes to format as content in pages' infoboxes, as I understand is the design the project is pursuing.
No, that's not the case. The data objects will be cached in the client wiki (i.e. wikipedia) and be loaded into memory once for any page that uses them. Doing API calls during the render process would be very scary.
Could you please explain to this community why it's technically superior to field a client/server API rather than transclusion, e.g.,
{{wikidata:en:infobox:Thomas Jefferson}}
It seems more stable a design to format the infobox on wikidata, and then simply transclude the result.
Keeping the control over the formatting in the client wiki seems desirable to me, though I also see the appeal of a central repository for infobox templates. We could just have both though, just like for images: use the local version if it exists, otherwise use thetemplate form a central repo (which may be on the wikidata site or somewhere else).
-- daniel