2013/4/10 Risker <risker...@gmail.com> > On 9 April 2013 12:15, Denny Vrandečić <denny.vrande...@wikimedia.de> > wrote: > > > Risker, > > > > I find myself unconvinced by your argumentation as I perceive it as > > inconsistent. > > > > On the one hand, you suggest that before we enable the option to access > > data from Wikidata using either Lua or a parser function should be > > discussed and decided by the community beforehand - the same community, > > that has been informed since mid 2011 that this change is coming. You > > suppose that the community can actually come together and decide this > > globally. > > > > > On the other hand, you are not trusting the community with the use of the > > same feature. You say they would "weaponize" the feature, that the > > community will be unable to adapt to the new feature, and that it needs > to > > discuss first how to use it, and for deployment to wait a few months (I > do > > not fully understand why you assume that a few months will be enough to > > sort things out). You seem to assume that a wiki as large and active as > the > > English Wikipedia is not resilient enough to absorb the rather minor > > technical change we are introducing. > > > > It is, technically, a minor change. Socially it can lead to bigger > changes > > -- but I found it hard to believe that anyone can predict the actual > effect > > on the English Wikipedia community. This has to be seen and experienced, > > and I, for one, trust the English Wikipedia community to be as awesome as > > always, and to absorb and use this new features in ways no one has even > > imagined yet. > > > > I'll just quickly point out the dichotomy in what you're saying here: first > you say that you doubt the project can come together and make a global > decision, and then you say that it is resilient enough to ... make a global > decision. > > No, this is not what I am saying.
I am saying that the English Wikipedia is resilient enough to absorb such a change after it happened. I would actually be a bit disappointed if that would happen through a global and absolute decision on whether to replace all template parameters through Wikidata, or to not use Wikidata at all. I see a lot of middle ground there, which can be decided case by case, Wikiproject per Wikiproject, template per template, article per article, and even per single parameter in a template call. I even hold the notion of a single English Wikipedia community to be misleading. There are many overlapping communities working on the different parts of the project. I expect that some of them might embrace the new features that Wikidata offers, and others might less so. And that is OK. If editors of classical composer articles don't want infoboxes for them, so be it. Wikidata does not require them. It won't take long for these editors to figure out that they can use Wikidata as an argument *against* having Infoboxes: after all, if you want an Infobox just go to Wikidata. If the editor community of Egyptian cities prefers to keep their mayors up to date through Wikidata though, because they are more comfortable in Egyptian Arabic, French, or Arabic, but still edit a bit on English - as so many do - why deny them? There are many different ways Wikidata will interact with existing workflows. I can envision some, but I expect the creativity of Wikipedians to go well beyond that, and amaze me again. But this can only happen if we let Wikidata and Wikipedia grow together and co-evolve. If we wait a few months to let Wikidata mature, there is a serious threat of the two projects to grow too much apart. > I suppose what I am saying here is that Wikidata doesn't seem to be working > within the articulated "master vision" of the platform (which focuses on > simplifying the editorial process) > Simplifying editing and reducing maintenance costs for the Wikipedias are explicit goals of Wikidata. Obviously the simplest edit is the one you don't have to do. Furthermore, simplifying template calls makes the job of the Visual Editor team easier. Also Wikidata provides an API that makes inline editing possible. James and I are talking with each other, and we are making sure that the vision does not diverge. > And yes, from the perspective > of editors, infoboxes are part of the content of the article. The > technology change may be minor, but its use means changing the core "anyone > can edit" philosophy that has created, and constantly renewed and > developed, the wikipedia projects. > > In that matter, we are currently failing. The often screen-filling Infobox invocation code at the top of an article, that is displayed when you click on "edit", has scared off many potential contributors. Wikidata is going to provide the means to improve the situation considerably. I apologize to Denny for my > being too much of a word wonk, and perhaps spending too much time reading > political history. > > Thank you for the explanation. As a non-native speaker I did not have the same connotation and was thus confused by the strong reaction. Cheers, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
