[Foundation-l] Wikidata

[Joan Goma]

I see the highest interest in statistical data that can be automatically
updated from official sources.

> Date: Fri, 28 May 2010 16:51:27 +1000
> From: John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikidata
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Cc: peter017 at gmail.com, Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
>        <commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <AANLkTikQ7kmy4D9Hvkb3HiA51zRs3hmvLrxUmnCnaWEA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> It looks like a solution to bug 4547 is on the horizon.
>
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4547
>
> See also [Wikitech-l] Reasonably efficient interwiki transclusion
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/197322
>
> This will be very useful for templates which Commons has developed,
> especially language related templates, however I am concerned that
> people are also planning on using Commons as a repo for Wikipedia
> infoboxes, and including the *data* on Commons rather than just the
> template code.  e.g.
>
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Peter17/GSoc_2010#Interest
>
> This centralisation of data makes sense on many levels, however using
> Commons as the host of this data will result in many edit wars moving
> to the Commons project, involving people from many languages.  Even
> the infobox structure can be the cause of edit wars.
>
> I think it is undesirable to have these Wikipedia problems added to
> Commons existing problems. ;-)
>
> Tying Wikipedia and Commons closer together is also problematic when
> we consider the differing audience and scope of each project,
> especially in light of the recent media problems.  If the core
> templates and data used by Wikipedia are hosted/modified on Commons,
> it will be more difficult to justify why Commons accepts content which
> isn't appropriate on Wikipedia.
>
> A centralised data wiki has been proposed previously, many times:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/historical
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata_%282%29
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiDatabank
>
> Non-WMF projects, such as freebase, dbpedia, etc., have been exploring
> this space.
>
> Isn't it time that we started a new project!? ;-)
>
> A wikidata project could use semantic mediawiki from the outset, and
> be seeded with data from dbpedia.
>
> A lot of existing & proposed projects would benefit from a centralised
> wikidata project.  e.g. a genealogy wiki could use the relationships
> stored on the wikidata project.  wikisource and commons could use the
> central data wiki for their Author and Creator details.
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
> *********************************************
>