Denny, Thank you for doing so much to make Wikidata a reality.
The Wikimedia community had been waiting for years for an integrated structured data framework, and your long-term commitment to a vision has been a major reason we now have that. To me and I think many other contributors, it feels like the vapor of that nebulous project known as the Semantic Web is condensing in the structures taking form at Wikidata. That fact that it is doing so with strong support for knowledge diversity is important and to your credit. The few times we've interacted have been enough to give me food for thought for quite a while. Your broader writing about Wikidata is illuminating and I hope you continue to share your thoughts on the best directions for the project. Best wishes with Google, and Q! Regards, Eric https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Emw On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 9:28 AM, Denny Vrandečić < denny.vrande...@wikimedia.de> wrote: > I am truly and deeply amazed by the Wikidata community. > > A bit more than a year ago, I moved to Berlin and assembled a fantastic > team of people to help realize a vision. Today, we have collected millions > of statements, geographical locations, points in time, persons and their > connections, creative works, and species - and every single minute, hundred > of edits are improving and changing this knowledge base that anyone can > edit, that anyone can use for free. > > So much more is left to do, and the further we go, the more opportunities > open. More datatypes - links are on the horizon, quantities will be a major > step. I can hardly wait to see Wikidata answer queries. And there are so > many questions unanswered - what does the community need in order to > maintain Wikidata best? Which tools, reports, special pages are needed? > What is the right balance between automation and flexibility? > > Besides Wikipedia, Wikidata can be used in many other places. We just > started the conversations about sister projects, but also external projects > are expected to become smarter thanks to Wikidata. I expect tools and > libraries and patterns for these type of uses will emerge in the next few > months, and applications will become more intelligent and act more > informed, powered by Wikidata. > > A project like Wikidata needs in its early days a strong, sometimes > stubborn leader in order to accelerate its growth. But at some point a > project gathers sufficient momentum, and the community moves faster than > any single leader could lead, and suddenly they might become bottlenecks, > and instead of accelerating the project the might be stalling it. > > Wikidata has reached the point where it is time for me to step down. The > Wikidata development team in Berlin will, in the upcoming weeks and months, > set up processes that allow the community, that I learned to trust even > more during that year, to take over the reigns. I will stay with the team > until the end of September, and then become again what I have been for the > last decade - a normal and proud member of the Wikimedia communities. > > I also would like to use this chance to reveal a secret. Wikidata items > are identified by a Q, followed by a number, Wikidata properties by a P, > followed by a number. Whereas it is obvious that the P stands for property, > some of you have asked - why Q? My answer was, that Q not only looks cool, > but also makes for great identifiers, and hopefully a certain set of people > will some day associate a number like Q9036 with something they can look up > in Wikidata. But the true reason is that Q is the first letter of the name > of the woman I love. We married last year, among all that Wikidata > craziness, and I am thankful to her for the patience she had while I was > discussing whether to show wiki identifiers or language keys, what bugs to > prioritize when, and which calendar systems were used in Sweden. > > I will continue to be a community member with Wikidata. My new day job, > though, will be at Google, and from there I hope to continue to effectively > further our goals towards a world where everyone has access to the sum of > all knowledge. > > Sincerely, > Denny Vrandečić > > -- > Project director Wikidata > Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin > Tel. +49-30-219 158 26-0 | http://wikimedia.de > > Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. > Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter > der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für > Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikidata-l mailing list > Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l > >
_______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
