Andrea,
I totally agree on the mission/vision thing, but am not sure what you mean
exactly by scale - do you mean that Wikidata shouldn't try to be so
granular that it has a statement to cover each factoid in any Wikipedia
article, or do you mean we need to talk about what constitutes notability
in order not to grow Wikidata exponentially to the point the servers crash?
Jane
On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 7:10 PM, Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I really feel we are drowning in a glass of water.
The issue of "data quality" or "reliability" that Andreas raises is
well
known:
what I don't understand if the "scale" of it is much bigger on Wikidata
than Wikipedia,
and if this different scale makes it much more important. The scale of the
issue is maybe something worth discussing, and not the issue itself? Is the
fact that Wikidata is centralised different from statements on Wikipedia? I
don't know, but to me this is a more neutral and interesting question.
I often say that the Wikimedia world made quality an "heisemberghian"
feature: you always have to check if it's there.
The point is: it's been always like this.
We always had to check for quality, even when we used Britannica or
authority controls or whatever "reliable" sources we wanted. Wikipedia, and
now Wikidata, is made for everyone to contribute, it's open and honest in
being open, vulnerable, prone to errors. But we are transparent, we say
that in advance, we can claim any statement to the smallest detail. Of
course it's difficult, but we can do it. Wikidata, as Lydia said, can
actually have conflicting statements in every item: we "just" have to put
them there, as we did to Wikipedia.
If Google uses our data and they are wrong, that's bad for them. If they
correct the errors and do not give us the corrections, that's bad for us
and not ethical from them. The point is: there is no license (for what I
know) that can force them to contribute to Wikidata. That is, IMHO, the
problem with "over-the-top" actors: they can harness collective intelligent
and "not give back." Even with CC-BY-SA, they could store (as they are
probably already doing) all the data in their knowledge vault, which is
secret as it is an incredible asset for them.
I'd be happy to insert a new clause of "forced transparency" in CC-BY-SA
or
CC0, but it's not there.
So, as we are working via GLAMs with Wikipedia for getting reliable
sources and content, we are working with them also for good statements and
data. Putting good data in Wikidata makes it better, and I don't understand
what is the problem here (I understand, again, the issue of putting too
much data and still having a small community).
For example: if we are importing different reliable databases, andthe
institutions behind them find it useful and helpful to have an aggregator
of identifiers and authority controls, what is the issue? There is value in
aggregating data, because you can spot errors and inconsistencies. It's not
easy, of course, to find a good workflow, but, again, that is *another*
problem.
So, in conclusion: I find many issues in Wikidata, but not on the
mission/vision, just in the complexity of the project, the size of the
dataset, the size of the community.
Can we talk about those?
Aubrey
On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 6:40 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 5:32 PM, geni
<geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 13 December 2015 at 15:57, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Jane,
The issue is that you can't cite one Wikipedia article as a source in
another.
However you can within the same article per [[WP:LEAD]].
Well, of course, if there are reliable sources cited in the body of the
article that back up the statements made in the lead. You still need to
cite a reliable source though; that's Wikipedia 101.
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