[Wikimedia-l] Wikidata opinion piece in The Atlantic

[ENWP Pine]

Here's an opinion piece, "The Problem with Wikidata", by Mark Graham, who
"is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute," which appears on
The Atlantic's website. I'm not personally supporting or opposing his views
but I found this to be an interesting read.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-problem-with-wikidata/255564/ 


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[Andreas Kolbe-2]

I would like to second that recommendation. I read that article too, and
thought it highly relevant.

Information is power, and there is a real danger of both monopolisation and
manipulation of information here.

Andreas


On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 12:46 AM, En Pine <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> Here's an opinion piece, "The Problem with Wikidata", by Mark Graham, who
> "is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute," which appears on
> The Atlantic's website. I'm not personally supporting or opposing his views
> but I found this to be an interesting read. http://www.theatlantic.com/**
> technology/archive/2012/04/**the-problem-with-wikidata/**255564/<http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-problem-with-wikidata/255564/>
>
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[Denny Vrandečić]

I agree that Mark has written a nice article, but I disagree with some of
his conclusions, as you can find in my comment on the page (alas, not
permalinkable).

Andreas, do you think that it is easier to monopolise and manipulate
information on Wikidata, visible to potentially many editors and users
coming from different backgrounds, than it would be in a Wikipedia language
edition with a small number of active editors? I.e. do you think that
Wikidata *increases* that danger, or merely does not improve the situation,
or maybe even has the chance of leading to a less likely to be manipulated
system?

Cheers,
Denny



2012/4/11 Andreas Kolbe <[hidden email]>

> I would like to second that recommendation. I read that article too, and
> thought it highly relevant.
>
> Information is power, and there is a real danger of both monopolisation and
> manipulation of information here.
>
> Andreas
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 12:46 AM, En Pine <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> >
> > Here's an opinion piece, "The Problem with Wikidata", by Mark Graham, who
> > "is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute," which appears on
> > The Atlantic's website. I'm not personally supporting or opposing his
> views
> > but I found this to be an interesting read.
> http://www.theatlantic.com/**
> > technology/archive/2012/04/**the-problem-with-wikidata/**255564/<
> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-problem-with-wikidata/255564/
> >
> >
> > ______________________________**_________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > [hidden email].**org <[hidden email]>
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l<
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l>
> >
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> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
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--
Project director Wikidata
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Eisenacher Straße 2 | 10777 Berlin
Tel. [phone] | 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.
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[Gerard Meijssen-3]

Hoi,
It is interesting that people consider the potential negative aspects and
forgets about the positive.

For me the big thing is that translatable info boxes is a perfect method of
populating relevant information in stub articles. This is of particular
relevance to the smaller Wikipedias, the projects where people are actively
building something up. I noticed on the Zulu Wikipedia that they are
working hard on doing something like this. Being able to translate the
labels, some words relating to the content.

There is also the notion of NPOV. Yes, sometimes people will fight over the
numbers but this will benefit the whole of Wikipedia.
Thanks,
     Gerard

http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2012/04/wikidata-and-what-it-can-do-for.html

On 11 April 2012 10:09, Denny Vrandečić <[hidden email]>wrote:

> I agree that Mark has written a nice article, but I disagree with some of
> his conclusions, as you can find in my comment on the page (alas, not
> permalinkable).
>
> Andreas, do you think that it is easier to monopolise and manipulate
> information on Wikidata, visible to potentially many editors and users
> coming from different backgrounds, than it would be in a Wikipedia language
> edition with a small number of active editors? I.e. do you think that
> Wikidata *increases* that danger, or merely does not improve the situation,
> or maybe even has the chance of leading to a less likely to be manipulated
> system?
>
> Cheers,
> Denny
>
>
>
> 2012/4/11 Andreas Kolbe <[hidden email]>
>
> > I would like to second that recommendation. I read that article too, and
> > thought it highly relevant.
> >
> > Information is power, and there is a real danger of both monopolisation
> and
> > manipulation of information here.
> >
> > Andreas
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 12:46 AM, En Pine <[hidden email]>
> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Here's an opinion piece, "The Problem with Wikidata", by Mark Graham,
> who
> > > "is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute," which appears
> on
> > > The Atlantic's website. I'm not personally supporting or opposing his
> > views
> > > but I found this to be an interesting read.
> > http://www.theatlantic.com/**
> > > technology/archive/2012/04/**the-problem-with-wikidata/**255564/<
> >
> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-problem-with-wikidata/255564/
> > >
> > >
> > > ______________________________**_________________
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > > [hidden email].**org <[hidden email]>
> > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l<
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l>
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Project director Wikidata
> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Eisenacher Straße 2 | 10777 Berlin
> Tel. [phone] | 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.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> [hidden email]
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
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[Tom Morris-5]

On 11 April 2012 11:25, Gerard Meijssen <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hoi,
> It is interesting that people consider the potential negative aspects and
> forgets about the positive.
>
> For me the big thing is that translatable info boxes is a perfect method of
> populating relevant information in stub articles. This is of particular
> relevance to the smaller Wikipedias, the projects where people are actively
> building something up. I noticed on the Zulu Wikipedia that they are
> working hard on doing something like this. Being able to translate the
> labels, some words relating to the content.
>

It also fixes the whole death anomalies thing: if someone dies, we can
update the Wikidata entry, rather than having conflicting information
on different language versions of Wikipedia. I would think some of our
more fanatical BLP adherents would rather like that. ;-)

Of course, I think the primary thing for me with Wikidata is the uses
that it can be put to that don't actually involve Wikipedia.
Governments are putting out thousands of datasets: complex
spreadsheets with often confusing or obscure information about the
societies we live in. Having a central place to store and improve that
information is something people have been trying to imagine for a
while: projects like CKAN and LinkedGov. It'd be interesting if we
could get a productive, drama-free community of people to maintain and
curate public government data, as this would enable all sorts of usage
both inside and outside the Wikimedia projects. "Data driven
journalism" is something that's actually flourishing pretty well
without much in the way of open source and free culture, it'd be
interesting from a long-range strategic kind of view how the Wikimedia
projects fit in.

--
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>

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[David Gerard-2]

On 11 April 2012 12:09, Tom Morris <[hidden email]> wrote:

> It also fixes the whole death anomalies thing: if someone dies, we can
> update the Wikidata entry, rather than having conflicting information
> on different language versions of Wikipedia. I would think some of our
> more fanatical BLP adherents would rather like that. ;-)


The Atlantic article is arguing against consensus reality existing,
and against NPOV rather than article forks. (This is quite aside from
the writer not understanding the feature and extrapolating from his
misunderstanding.)


- d.

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[Kim Bruning]

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 04:46:50PM -0700, En Pine wrote:
>
> Here's an opinion piece, "The Problem with Wikidata", by Mark Graham, who
> "is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute," which appears on
> The Atlantic's website. I'm not personally supporting or opposing his views
> but I found this to be an interesting read.
> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-problem-with-wikidata/255564/ 

From reading, it looks like the wikidata team has this at least partially covered.
We're making plenty of positive progress, but we do have to
keep our eyes open for (potential) pernicious potholes in the road.

If someone shouts "look out", we should definitely stop and look, just to be
sure. ;-)

sincerely,
        Kim Bruning

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