On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 11:28 AM, Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Andreas, you apparently did not read the following
sentence:
"Of course, the opposite is also true: it's a single point of openness,
correction, information. "
Andrea,
I understand and appreciate your point, but I would like you to consider
that what you say may be less true of Wikidata than it is for other
Wikimedia wikis, for several reasons:
Wikipedia, Wiktionary etc. are functionally open and correctable because
people by and large view their content on Wikipedia, Wiktionary etc. itself
(or in places where the provenance is clearly indicated, thanks to CC
BY-SA). The place where you read it is the same place where you can edit
it. There is an "Edit" tab, and it really *is* easy to change the content.
(It is certainly easy to correct a typo, which is how many of us started.)
With Wikidata, this is different. Wikidata, as a semantic wiki, is designed
to be read by machines. These machines don't edit, they *propagate*.
Wikidata is not a site that end users--human beings--will browse and
consult the way people consult Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Commons, etc.
Wikidata is, or will be, of interest mostly to re-users--search engines and
other intermediaries who will use its machine-readable data as an input to
build and design their own content. And when they use Wikidata as an input,
they don't have to acknowledge the source.
Allowing unattributed re-use may *seem* more open. But I contend that in
practice it makes Wikidata *less* open as a wiki: because when people don't
know where the information comes from, they are also unable to contribute
at source. The underlying Wikimedia project effectively becomes invisible
to them, a closed book.
That is not good for a crowdsourced project from multiple points of view.
Firstly, it impedes recruitment. Far fewer consumers of Wikidata
information will become Wikidata editors, because they will typically find
Wikidata content on other sites where Wikidata is not even mentioned.
Secondly, it reduces transparency. Data provenance is important, as Mark
Graham and Heather Ford have pointed out.
Thirdly, it fails to encourage appropriate vigilance in the consumer. (The
error propagation problems I've described in this thread all involved
unattributed re-use of Wikimedia content.)
There are other reasons why Wikidata is less open, besides CC0 and the lack
of attribution.
Wikidata is the least user-friendly Wikimedia wiki. The hurdle that
newbies--even experienced Wikimedians--have to overcome to contribute is an
order of magnitude higher than it is for other Wikimedia projects.
For a start, there is no Edit tab at the top of the page. When you go to
Barack Obama's entry in Wikidata[1] for example, the word "Edit" is not to
be found anywhere on the page. It does not look like a page you can edit
(and indeed, members of the public can't edit it).
It took me a while to figure out that the item is protected (just like the
Jerusalem item).
In other Wikimedia wikis that do have an "Edit" tab, that tab changes to
"View source" if the page is protected, giving a visual indication of the
page's status that people--Wikimedia insiders at least--can recognise.
Unprotected Wikidata items do have "edit" and "add" links, but they
are
less prominent. (The "add" link for adding new properties is hidden away at
the very bottom of the page.) And when you do click "edit" or "add",
it is
not obvious what you are supposed to do, the way it is in text-based wikis.
The learning curve involved in actually editing a Wikidata item is far
steeper than it is in other Wikimedia wikis. There is no Wikidata
equivalent of the "correcting a typo" edit in Wikipedia. You need to go
away and learn the syntax before you can do anything at all in Wikidata.
For all of these reasons I believe the systemic balance between information
delivery (output) and ease of contribution (input) is substantially
different for Wikidata than it is for any other Wikimedia wiki.
So, if you don't like it, maybe the Wikimedia
movements is not suitable for
you, maybe you'd like more working in Citizendium or something. There's no
shame in it, and I really believe it: it's just a matter of choice.
I have been contributing to Wikimedia projects for ten years now. I
consider it an important movement to be involved in, exactly per your
arguments about openness and public involvement above. If openness is a
strength, then it follows that Wikimedia as a movement is stronger for
debate and dissent.
On a more personal level, I find the idea of free knowledge inspiring. At
every Wikimedia event I have attended, that excitement and the joy of
creation are in the air and communicate themselves. I relate to it, and
share in it. There are many Wikimedia content creators whose I work I
admire and respect, and who have become friends.
But I don't share the quasi-religious zeal that seems to suffuse some of
the public discourse in the Wikimedia movement around free knowledge. In
fact I find it subtly troubling. In actual practice, I see substantial
downsides as well as upsides to the work the Wikimedia community is doing.
But to be honest, whenever I meet other Wikimedians, they seem to see
plenty of downsides too. :)
Keeping sight of the downsides is important if you want to provide a better
service to the public.
I personally choose to believe in openness as a way to
leverage good will
from people, willingness to share knowledge. I believe Wikidata is going in
the same direction, and I have not found evidence yet that the "power and
centralisation" of data make the openness a problem of a different
magnitudo, different from Wikipedia.
I'm happy to discuss this point specifically, as I think we can have a
reasonable and constructive debate on this.
In part, this will depend on how and by whom the content will be re-used,
and how aware end users will be where the data comes from. I think right
now, it is too early to say.
Matters are not helped by the fact that without attribution, it will be
very hard for us--or indeed anyone else--to track down who is and who is
not using Wikidata content. Search engines in particular are very secretive
about their sources of information.
Regards,
Andreas
[1]
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76