On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 2:24 PM, Daan Kuijsten <daankuijs...@gmail.com>wrote:
> > On 23-Apr-14 21:29, wikitech-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: > >> Re: API attribute ID for querying wikipedia pages >> > > @Matma Rex: This is way to general, I think it would be a lot better when > this would be in more detail. For example when I want to fetch a table with > all currencies on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ > List_of_circulating_currencies, I would make an API call like this: > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=parse&page= > List%20of%20circulating%20currencies&prop=sections&format=jsonfm. This > returns 5 sections with "numbers" which I can use as reference points, but > I would rather have a "number" for the table in the section. A section can > have multiple tables. > > Querying specific (structured) data from Wikipedia is still very difficult > in my opinion. My suggestion is that every paragraph, image, link and table > get a unique identifiable number. This way Wikipedia gets more machine > readable. > > I see where you are coming from, but this implies that these are stable properties over multiple revisions, which they aren't. If I have a table in revision 1, remove it in revision 2, and add it back in in revision 3, is it still the same table? What if I slightly change it? How much do I have to change it before its identity changes? A wiki(pedia) page is by its very nature a dynamic construct, and assigning stable identifiers to elements would make this at least extremely impractical. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
