With regard to wikidata infoboxes, it is either
* that the usual technical APIs implemented as parser functions must be learned by every Wikipedian
* or that simple interwiki transclusions are entered via the emerging WYSIWYG tools for Wikipedia
With regard to the content of wikidata infoboxes, it is either
* that nothing is annotated -- all such (semantic web) queries are driven resolutely towards wikidata
* or that infobox triples are annotated via HTML/a -- article content can optionally have HTML/a markup
In short it is either
* no wikipedias can be considered part of the semantic web
* or all wikipedias stand at the center of the semantic web
On Jul 10, 2012, at 10:29 PM, jmcclure@hypergrove.com wrote:
In short it is either
- no wikipedias
can be considered part of the semantic web
- or all wikipedias stand
at the center of the semantic web
No. A conclusion like that seems to be conflicting with what wikidata is.
Whether some Wikipedia's output is semantically correct is important, but (afaik) has *zero* relationship with Wikidata. And as such is not relevant here.
Centralizing infobox designs is a good idea. Centralizing only the html output for infoboxes but doing the style locally, that sounds good too (as in, better than what we have now).
But neither of those is or should be put in relation with wikidata.
This sounds like one of the many things a template repository wiki will be doing. But wikidata is not a template repository and is explicitly designed to disallow anything even like it.
-- Krinkle
Krinkle,
When you say "Whether some Wikipedia's output is semantically correct is important, but (afaik) has *zero* relationship with Wikidata. And as such is not relevant here" then I feel compelled to point out that an ontology is most certainly envisioned -- wikidata is implementing the SMW Property namespace! Undoubtedly it will use Category: for owl:Class representations, just like SMW. And builtin Datatypes, just like SMW. So, wikidata actually is *100%* concerned with the semantic web.
Then your discussion turns to templates: "Centralizing infobox designs is a good idea ... But neither (styling nor templates) is or should be put in relation with wikidata." Sorry but this unsupported assertion is irrelevant to whether wikipedias' requests to the wikidata server are for rdf triples or for html/a objects.
Finally you note that "This sounds like one of the many things a template repository wiki will be doing. But wikidata is not a template repository and is explicitly designed to disallow anything even like it." Apart from whether wikidata can play the role of a [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Template_repository] with regard to Infobox templates is totally beside the point here as the issue now is about what is being retrieved from wikidata -- is it rdf triples or html/a objects.
In the former case, wikidata is the de facto designated hub for the entire constellation of wikipedias. In the other, each wikipedia is a source of reusable, annotated information, with a distinct possibility of retrieving information beyond the infobox from within the body of the article.
I've earlier sketched the scenario of an author on a wikipedia who would log into wikidata, build an infobox for a topic, save it, and then transclude its page. Obviously wikidata will at some point provide that author a list of available templates -- **keyed by the type of topic named by the author**. So yes I think wikidata will over time naturally play the role of a language-sensitive repository of infobox templates (and queries and maps and charts and so forth - see [[mw:extension:semantic result format]].
Thanks - john
Replies inline.
On Jul 11, 2012, at 6:23 AM, jmcclure@hypergrove.com wrote:
When you say "Whether some Wikipedia's output is semantically correct is important, but (afaik) has *zero* relationship with Wikidata. And as such is not relevant here" then I feel compelled to point out that an ontology is most certainly envisioned -- wikidata is implementing the SMW Property namespace! Undoubtedly it will use Category: for owl:Class representations, just like SMW. And builtin Datatypes, just like SMW. So, wikidata actually is *100%* concerned with the semantic web.
I agree completely :). Wikidata will most certainly allow MediaWiki sites to more easily output good and properly organized semantic data that is machine readable and follows standards.
I am merely pointing out that, from what I've seen so far (note I am just observing Wikidata, I'm not on their team or actively participate in its development by other means) ..so far, that it is intended to allow including data from a repository. And to allow that free of format constraints.
For example, one popular example used is the population of Berlin. I may want to retrieve the raw number, of formatted according to the user language. Or perhaps I want to output a table in an article with the yearly population numbers of the last 20 years and then add <ref> invocations for the sources as known to Wikidata.
Or perhaps I want an estimate of different sources (some source may indicate the population at 2011-01-01 to be number X, another organization may have a different method and came up with a different number at a different date in 2011). Or a range. Etc. Many variations possible.
And I might add that having semantic output does not require any form or centralization. One can output semantic html with data attributes or whatever microformat right from wikitext (like done on Wikipedia right through the {{Persondata}} template[1]).
And likewise one will be able to output data from Wikidata without having to use a particular format.
That's not to say that there shouldn't be any html view of wikidata by default, that could be a very useful feature. I'll leave that up to someone else more involved to comment about.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Persondata
-- Krinkle
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