Gerard, 

Sure there's plenty of people who can build a prototype
application of this sort -- most people pay mortgages though so it'd be
nice (if not required) to get compensated for such work, as you & the
wikidata team are. 

re the wikidata excuse: it's wise to change one's
heading before one's lost. Personally I think anyone creating an
smw-based extension will do so far more swiftly (and cheaply) than what
the wikidata team currently has in mind, ie, to rewrite SMW (and various
of its extensions) almost from scratch. I have proposed the outline of
such an application at [[meta:wikitopics]]. I'm even convinced that the
SMW-based application as proposed will be faster operationally. 

John


On 13.06.2012 00:52, Gerard Meijssen wrote: 

> Hoi, 
> There are
several points WHY a centrally administered info box makes sense. The
most important one can be found in what the Wikimedia Foundation aims to
achieve: Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely
share in the sum of all knowledge [1]]. This is what we are about,
everything that prevents this from happening are excuses 
> When you
consider the number of articles in most Wikipedias, it is easy to see
that the English Wikipedia has more info boxes then many of them have
articles. By providing the facility to have centrally maintained info
boxes, these info boxes will be extremely light weight as both the
information and the labels will be maintained in Wikidata. The result is
information that is available for localisation. This localisation
consists of translating the labels and possibly the information items. I
blogged about this in the past ... [2] 
> I am an advisor to the
Wikidata project and as such it is my job to make these arguments. Denny
is the project manager for the Wikidata project and it is his job to
ensure that his team will deliver on the agreed deliverables. Having
centrally maintained templates is not part of what his team has agreed
to or can be expected to deliver in the short term. This is a valid
excuse; it is valid for now. 
> An excuse for the Wikidata development
team does not prevent other people from developing this functionality in
stead. The basic requirement is for Wikidata to be able to have
translatable data items associated with a Wikipedia article. As each of
those items are uniquely identified, they can be identified in a
template. This template should only refer to the data items. 
> When
this functionality is developed, the basic functionality is ready to
consider the use of such templates for real in Wikidata clients. 
> I am
confident that there are plenty people who have the expertise to make a
functional prototype. Such a prototype can be reviewed by any MediaWiki
reviewer for the usual MediaWiki criteria. When this is done, it is no
longer an unreasonable burden for the Wikidata team to consider the
functionality of such prototypes. 
> Thanks, 
> Gerard 
> [1]
www.wikimediafoundation.org [3] 
> [2]
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2012/05/wmdevdays-wikidata.html [4]

> 
> On 13 June 2012 00:03, <[email protected] [5]> wrote:
> 
>>
Denny said: On the other hand, you are not the only person thinking that
this (Wikitopics) is a good idea (hello Gerard!), and in the long run
Wikidata could be extended to such a system -- but for now I regard this
to be out of scope for Wikidata and I will not devote resources for
this. _IT CAN BE ADDED LATER ANYWAY_. 
>> 
>> Denny, 
>> 
>> I never see
the long-run! Anyway, to get real, be aware there are specific concerns
about [[wikidata]] within the SMW community in the here and now: 
>> 
>>
* we worry that our sites are threatened by virtual cessation of SMW
development -- this may already be happening a bit as SMW subjectively
seems to be encountering quality control issues lately 
>> 
>> * we
worry that, whenever we install the [[Wikidata]] extension, then the
performance of client sites will be affected by the burden of multiple
forms, query and format software modules, syntaxes, styles, artifacts
etc 
>> 
>> * we worry that, since no specific problems experienced by
wiki-users have yet been identified that [[Wikidata]] will "fix", in the
end, [[wikidata]] is doomed for not creating stakeholders within the
wiki-user community that includes SMW developers. 
>> 
>> jmc 
>> 
>>
_______________________________________________
>> Wikidata-l mailing
list
>> [email protected] [1]
>>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l [2]




Links:
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[4]
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[5]
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