Hi,
are we really speaking about the same?
- Pure data serving should be possible there is no disagree here as I
think.
- Should infoboxes be provided?
I was not speaking about the possibility for Wikipedia then. At least I
did not meant it. I more likely wanted to point out that we should
separate the infrastructure generating those infoboxes from this used
for serving the data.
Having this in my mind I was thinking a bit more wide and questioned if
creating the templates for the infoboxes itself should really be part of
wikidata or if it should be part of the further development of the
rendering engine to provide an easy possibility to fill the infoboxes
with data.
It will be probably the easiest way to separate this into more steps:
The first should be to provide an easy way to integrate single
properties into the article's pure text. Inside the article [[en:Tiger]]
we are then able to write sentences like:
"In 1929, the British taxonomist Reginald Innes Pocock subordinated the
species under the genus {{wikidata:tiger:genus}} using the scientific
name
{{wikidata:tiger:bionomial_name}}.<ref>{{wikidata:tiger:ref4646413}}</ref>"
Inside an infobox it should also be possible to use those facts:
{{Taxobox
| status = EN
...
| regnum = [[{{wikidata:tiger:regnume}}]]
| phylum = [[{{wikidata:tiger:phylum}}]]
| classis = [[{{wikidata:tiger:classis}}]]
| ordo = [[{{wikidata:tiger:ordo}}]]
| familia = [[{{wikidata:tiger:familia}}]]
| genus = ''[[{{wikidata:tiger:genus}}]]''
...
}}
I know this looks very silly, but should be possible anyway by providing
the possibility to use facts inside flowing text. If somebody likes it,
he could use it like this or wait until the next step.
The next step should be to upgrade the infobox templates to teach them
to not just use single facts. They should also be able to use
"data-structures" as they are called in C/C++. I always thought that
this is not part of wikidata, more part of the rendering engine.
This also needs to work in multiple steps for correct rendering of e.g.
one of the above wikidata-requests: For a request for
"{{wikidata:tiger:regnume}}" "[[Animal]]ia" should be returned. The link
location and the shown text are not the same. The birthday of Barack
Obama should be anything like "[[4. August]] [[1961]]", as this format
is used very often in the German Wikipedia. This example should show
that this format is necessary, because of two different links.
So the first part of rendering should be the replacement all occurrences
of the wikidata-tags. Here we can also replace the
"{{infobox:wikidata:tiger}}" by what is already used inside the source text.
The first step should generate source text in the style we already know.
Then we could use the next step to render the article shown in the browser.
Marco
On 2012-06-16 11:09, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi,
I absolutely agree that Wikidata should be able to serve data in an
unformatted way. I absolutely disagree that there is no need for serving
data formatted in info boxes. Consider this use case:
Someone translated the texts associated with all the popes in Xhosa.
There are no articles on popes in the Xhosa Wikipedia but because of the
information and the info box in Wikidata it is possible to include
information in Xhosa on the not found page together with the interwiki
data. As this information is well presented, it makes sense for people
to volunteer and translate Wikidata texts, as this information is well
presented, people do select a language that provides information on the
subject.
Consequently being able to serve pure data does not imply that it should
not serve formatted data. Technically there is nothing stopping us from
doing both.
Thanks,
Gerard
On 15 June 2012 19:55, Marco Fleckinger <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hallo,
On 2012-06-14 12:33, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi,
Technically there is nothing stopping Wikidata from hosting multiple
infoboxes on the same subject. The big thing about such infoboxes is
that their layout is the same for all subjects in the same category.
This does not mean that every one looks the same but it does
mean they
follow a consistent pattern.
Providing multiple infobox templates for the same subject is a very
good point, as it is not necessary to override (see below) on each
single page of a language version.
When people talk about things like colours and stuff, it becomes
highly
emotional but in the final analysis at this stage it is just
more bike
shedding. It should be obvious that attributes like colour can be
overriden.. Given that info boxes will not be supported in the near
future ...
I agree that overriding attributes should be possible. The pages of
different Wikimedia-projects sometimes look very different in
colours and so on.
Just think of "acceptable view":
Overriding should be possible on two different positions:
# Style-sheet:
Example: The box may behave different if we use
"Lista de correo electrónico" instead of
"Mailing list" as a key word
# Rendering:
* Value-conversion: different units and languages.
** −459,67 °F = 0 °Ra = −218,52 °R = −273,15 °C = 0 K
** city(48°8′24″N 11°34′30″E) = "Munich" = "München" =
"Múnich" = "Monaco di Baviera" ...
* Precision:
** π shown as "3.1415926" with precision 7
** extended to subjects like locations of e.g. shopping
malls more or less precision is wanted. For example
the location of [[de:Europark_(__Einkaufszentrum)]]:
*** "Salzburg (City), Austria" (for zh.wikipedia.org
<http://zh.wikipedia.org>)
*** "Salzburg, Austria" (for de.wikipedia.org
<http://de.wikipedia.org>)
*** "Taxham, Salzburg" (for http://salzburg.com/wiki)
The notion that people should curate the info boxes locally is
something
that I do not subscribe to. Not being able to agree on data and
sources
is the same as not being able to reach a neutral point of view. This
does not mean that multiple sources may not agree but equally it
does
not mean that different sources cannot be maintained from within
Wikidata.
Finally, when Wikidata provides data and info boxes, it does not
mean
that any project is compelled to use it. As Wikidata matures, it
will
become increasingly clear that it is not the best practice.
Thanks,
I'm not a server specialist and not an excellent developer but due
to the fact that it should also be possible to use pure data outside
of wikimedia, data providing and page rendering should be seperated
strict from each other.
Wikidata should therefore only be responsible for retrieving data
with correct precision, value conversion and mode as requested. The
rendering engine, not part of Wikidata, should be responsible for
creating the HTML-code of the whole article including that of the
infobox as well.
GerardM
On 14 June 2012 12:11, Gregor Hagedorn <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>__>> wrote:
While I agree that it is desirable to support simple,
preformatted
Infoboxes that can, with minimal effort be re-used in a
large number
of language versions of Wikipedia, I strongly disagree with
the demand
to make this the only choice.
I think the present Wikidata approach to allow local
Wikipedias to
customize their infoboxes by accessing wikidata properties
property-by-property is the right path.
The large Wikipedias with many editors have invested
considerable
creative energy into making quite a large number of infoboxes
elaborate information containers. That includes formatting,
images and
hand-crafted links in both the "field name" and the "field
value"
side. Some values are expressed through svg graphics, other
values
expressed through background color coding, etc.
Limiting the usability of Wikidata to plain vanilla infox
boxes could
cause considerable resistance in these communities. And
although small
Wikipedia will profit a lot from Wikidata, without the
engagement of
editors from the large Wikipedias into curating Wikidata
content, the
increased synergies will not happen.
Another issue is that (I believe that) Wikidata does not
have a notion
of ordering properties. Correct? This is no issue for the
present
Wikidata approach because infoboxes remain curated in each local
Wikipedia. However, in a centralized "one size fits all"
approach,
replacing existing infoboxes where information is presented in a
logical order with an alphabetical property order would
create huge
resistance (and would be a complex issue that Wikidata would
have to
deal with, allowing property ordering and filtering).
I believe that Wikidata correctly aims to provide a smooth
transition
path, where it is possible to obtain only part of an infobox
from
wikidata and inject wikidata content into existing infobox
layouts.
That said: I would encourage a third party contributor to try to
create a default Wikidata infobox generator in a way (extension
installable in multiple Wikipedias) that enables a wikipedia to
autocreate a good looking, plain vanilla infobox with
minimal effort.
Gregor
Marco
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