Daniel,

I suggest there isn't a need for "data objects (that) will be cached in the client wiki (i.e. wikipedia)". In the transclusion approach, nothing at all is cached by the client wiki except the infobox's HTML, within the squid cache as has been outlined. IOW, I'm still wondering *why* data objects must be retrieved and then cached by anyone, in the first place. And, so that I fully understand the wikidata approach, isn't it actually true that the API calls that you say are NOT occurring "during the render process (that) would be very scary", are indeed executed during every purge of a wikipage?

If, as you imply, transclusion meets wikidata's functional requirements, then would it still be necessary to require every wikipedia to install the client/server API (aka the "wikidata client")? What is so compelling about the client/server approach? You say "Keeping the control over the formatting in the client wiki seems desirable to me" overlooks the fact that normal wiki rules-of-the-road apply within the wikidata environment also, where authors certainly should be able to exert "control", likely even more so, over infobox content & styling.

Thanks - john

On 10.07.2012 14:08, Daniel Kinzler wrote:

On 10.07.2012 16:47,

jmcclure@hypergrove.comwrote:

...

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

Denny and Wikimedians,

In what ways might World University and School (which is like Wikipedia with MIT OCW), with plans to be in all 3,000-8,000 languages, and 200 countries, each a school or beginning university as a wiki page, to begin, participate in this process? The English version presently has nearly 500 wiki pages. Here's WUaS's Subject Template, - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/SUBJECT_TEMPLATE - as one key to WUaS's structure.

Cheers, Scott

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 8:17 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:

On 7/10/12 3:14 PM, jmcclure@hypergrove.com wrote:

...

...You say "Keeping the control over the

formatting in the client wiki seems desirable to me" overlooks the fact that normal wiki rules-of-the-road apply within the wikidata environment also, where authors certainly should be able to exert "control", likely even more so, over infobox content & styling.

My understanding is that "normal wiki rules-of-the-road" will not apply on WikiData, as the editing interface will be form-based, not wikitext-based. WikiData will not house any infoboxes, only the data that the Wikipedias will pull into their infoboxes (and elsewhere).

Housing the infoboxes on WikiData would be a terrible idea for several reasons:

• Every Wikipedia does infoboxes differently depending on the policies and

conventions of that wiki (for example, on English Wikipedia we strongly discourage flag icons in infoboxes, while other wikis don't care).

• Infoboxes are only 1 possible use of WikiData. Other possibilities:

** Setting the birth and death dates in the lead sentences of biographies ** Setting the coordinates displayed on geography articles ** Populating the interlanguage links (already planned)

Ryan Kaldari

---

Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Personally, I think the focus of this discussion on infoboxes is short-sighted. My personal hope is that Wikidata will actually allow the Wikipedias to use fewer infoboxes (and when they are used, for them to be much smaller). This may sound counter-intuitive, but let me explain...

<opinionated rant> Right now, English Wikipedia suffers from a continually growing plague of infobox cruft. Most articles on Wikipedia now look more like Pokemon cards than Encyclopedia articles. Compare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft The problem with infoboxes is that they are inherently unencyclopedic. Infoboxes are for viewing data, not for giving a nuanced and comprehensive overview of a subject. In fact they actually detract from that goal. The infobox for George Washington leads me to believe that he had equal allegiance to Britain and the U.S., that he was a Deist Episcopal (which is quite misleading in its simplicity), and that his role as President of the United States was just as important as his role as Delegate to the Second Continental Congress from Virginia. Not to mention the fact that it's nearly 3 pages long! Imagine an infobox like that sitting in http://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington.

If we had a repository where people could put all the fact-cruft that they want, they would probably be less tempted to spam the infoboxes with it. And maybe at some point we could even replace infoboxes with a "Data tab" or something similar that gave a full interface to the Wikidata data, but without having it dominate the Wikipedia article (as infoboxes do). I imagine that eventually the Wikidata content on many subjects will exceed the Wikipedia content.

So my personal hope is that Wikidata will eventually allow us to think outside the infobox. Heh, I think I'll make that my new slogan: "Think outside the infobox!" Or maybe "Death to infoboxes! Long live Wikidata!" :) </opinionated rant>

Disclaimer: I'm not directly involved with the Wikidata project, just an interested onlooker.

Ryan Kaldari

On 7/10/12 6:01 PM, jmcclure@hypergrove.com wrote:

Hi Ryan, Normal wiki rules of the road are about who can edit what and when, not so much how, that I was referencing; I was responding to the concern about "control".

You say: "Housing the infoboxes on WikiData would be a terrible idea for several reasons:

• Every

Wikipedia does infoboxes differently depending on the policies and conventions of that wiki (for example, on English Wikipedia we strongly discourage flag icons in infoboxes, while other wikis don't care).

Reply: {{wikidata:en:infobox:Thomas Jefferson}} certainly can be different in content & style from {{wikidata:de:infobox:Thomas Jefferson}}, so the concern seems insubstantial to me. Noone is talking about universal "policies & conventions".

• Infoboxes are only 1

possible use of WikiData. Other possibilities: ** Setting the birth and death dates in the lead sentences of biographies ** Setting the coordinates displayed on geography articles

Reply: You cite stable unchanging data. But should the community considers the ability to poll/re-poll/build/re-build constant data to be so important, then create a transcludable page on wikidata to hold that information. Do a {{subst:}} for that matter.

** Populating the interlanguage links (already planned)

Reply: Again, another (important) transcludable page.

So, I humbly continue to ask: why impose triples-level client/server APIs on every wikipedia? What's being gained by such a design?

Thanks in advance, John

---

Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Don't underestimate how much readers love infoboxes. ... Highly scannable info can be of great value to readers.

Agreed. I love Infoboxes and they are generally the first thing I read. I will admit that the George Washington one is far too long though; at that point it is no longer " Highly scannable info", but rather just a pile of data.

So I'm not sure moving all this stuff outside of the article is ever a good idea. But I agree there's a fair bit of cruft there as well, and Wikidata could help separate key at-a-glance facts from details.

I like the earlier mentioned idea of a Data tab for the extra information that could be removed from longer infoboxes.

Thank you, Derric Atzrott

P.S. Sorry about my terribly worded email to the list earlier this morning. I was tired and didn't proof read it first to make sure that it actually flowed according to the rules of English instead of my thoughts.

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:

Personally, I think the focus of this discussion on infoboxes is short-sighted. My personal hope is that Wikidata will actually allow the Wikipedias to use fewer infoboxes (and when they are used, for them to be much smaller). This may sound counter-intuitive, but let me explain...

<opinionated rant> Right now, English Wikipedia suffers from a continually growing plague of infobox cruft. Most articles on Wikipedia now look more like Pokemon cards than Encyclopedia articles. Compare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft The problem with infoboxes is that they are inherently unencyclopedic. Infoboxes are for viewing data, not for giving a nuanced and comprehensive overview of a subject. In fact they actually detract from that goal. The infobox for George Washington leads me to believe that he had equal allegiance to Britain and the U.S., that he was a Deist Episcopal (which is quite misleading in its simplicity), and that his role as President of the United States was just as important as his role as Delegate to the Second Continental Congress from Virginia. Not to mention the fact that it's nearly 3 pages long! Imagine an infobox like that sitting in http://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington.

If we had a repository where people could put all the fact-cruft that they want, they would probably be less tempted to spam the infoboxes with it. And maybe at some point we could even replace infoboxes with a "Data tab" or something similar that gave a full interface to the Wikidata data, but without having it dominate the Wikipedia article (as infoboxes do). I imagine that eventually the Wikidata content on many subjects will exceed the Wikipedia content.

So my personal hope is that Wikidata will eventually allow us to think outside the infobox. Heh, I think I'll make that my new slogan: "Think outside the infobox!" Or maybe "Death to infoboxes! Long live Wikidata!" :) </opinionated rant>

Disclaimer: I'm not directly involved with the Wikidata project, just an interested onlooker.

+1