Hi Gerard,
thanks for pointing this out. This is just the question I mentioned on my blogpost.
You say the main thing is to share in the sum of all knowledge, no matter how. I say the main thing is to support the communities doing this. These are the opposite opinions I mentioned - and we should discuss this in a very wide way.
And that's why I cited the mission of the foundation in my blogpost, with the first sentence *"Our mission is to empower a global volunteer community to collect and develop the world's knowledge and to make it available to everyone for free, for any purpose."* Empower the community is stated there as the main thing, and not share in the sum of all knowledge.
That's why I think this question is not answered yet, and I want to find an answer for WMDE at least.
Best, Steffen
2014-04-08 8:22 GMT+02:00 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, Take one step back. What our aim is, is to share in the sum of all knowledge. Arguably, this is the main and overriding objective of what we do. There are many strategies to get to the point where we share information. From where I stand, with Wikidata we have the opportunity to do better than with an only Wikipedia strategy: with Wikipedia we share the sum of knowledge that is available in one Wikipedia and with Wikidata we share in the sum of all the knowledge that is available to us.
Wikidata provides access to more information than any Wikipedia by a large margin.
There are those in our communities who aim to restrict the practices that realise Wikidata as the resource of information that is available to us. To say it in a political correct way, they can be and should be ignored. There are organisations that want to share information with us under a CC-0 license and there are those who want to share information under a CC-by license. The later can and should be ignored as well.
However, when I am to argue these points in a private setting, I will say that they can screw themselves. It is to make the point forcefully, it is to hammer on the fact that our objective is not the community but the sharing of knowledge. Yes, the community is important but that is the extend of it. When we can gain authoritative information provided by a GLAM, we should not consider the fact that we can enter all that information by hand. Those who want to add statements by hand can do so but they should not force their behaviour and attitudes on others. Thanks, GerardM