Hi, how about a wikipedia about objects?
Instead of generic articles of , for example, "Ballpoint pen" or "Bic cristal" it would be "Ballpoint pen Bic cristal 2014"
Doing these for millions of objects would allow people to have an open, free, universal and central place to refer specific objects.
*Some possible applications:*
- Creating neutral and standard lists:
Nowadays if anyone create, for example, a tutorial for building something (DIY projects, receipts, ...) they have to link all items to a comercial or no-neutral web which could change its url in the future or redirect it to adds or whatever.
Lists could be created in external webpages linking wikimedia objects webpage or/and could be created as category pages in Wikipedia. For example, currently, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_of_the_Year article lists cars which won COTY award but not links to the specific car (AUDI A3 Hatchback 2012 - Present) but generic serie (Audi A3).
The good thing at this point it's that to start creating object lists only item name is necessary, no infoboxes or description needed.
- Universal repository for inventories:
Lot of business fill their inventories again and again with same data ("cardboard box 50x30x15", "step by step nema motor 17", ... ) they should be able to import this data from a open website with their corresponding info like GTIN , SKU , Barcode... and more in the future weight, size, ...
- Encourage Recycling and Reutilitation:
Imagine if we use wikidata properties ( https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:List_of_properties/Generic) like "has part" and "part of" , people will find other uses for objects, or discover were to find
- Social activism and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Companies have info and metrics about their costumers (habits, location, ...) why not costumers have info about companies products, who manufacture what?, what products have a good carbon footprint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint?, what products have been retired from some problem?, what are Fair Trade?. This also can moved companies do better.
*Very rough roadmap*:
1. At the very begining, using wikidata infrestructure, objects would only have common info like "name", " image", "related links" (datasheets?), GTIN.
First use cases could be doing lists or grouping objects by categories.
2. Step by step new fields could be added like "manufacturer" , "tags", ...
3. A separated website could be created. wikiobject.org isn't availiabe so url could be something like objects.wikpedia.org
4. In a long-term in order to explote all the possibilities of this project more complex fields and relations would have to be managed, like for example "fridges with energy class A+++ and width less than 80 cm", which could be easy if all always were similar but nothing further from reality
A friend of mine and me tried to build a demo version in an home-made apache cassandra cluster four years ago, but we don't have enough resources and knowledge for that.
*Funding* In my humble opinion, problem with wikipedia funding It's that most part of its users don't see culture as a need (sorry for that, I am a sporadic donor). In Wikiobject case I think it could rather be different.
If part of companies business lies on this project, companies will be very inclined to donate to improve performace, usability, etc.. maybe similar to what happens in Linux.
Where came this need from? Data needed for some software to run, product vissibility, costumer requests, etc ... , no advertisement needed, It could be a need and standart.
I trully believe that world need something like this, and the correct people to do it, to warranty openness and independence, are you.
thanks for your time and attention, grettings