Sunday, October 12, 2014

#MediaWiki is about sharing the sum of all #knowledge

The organisational structure of the Wikimedia Foundation has been completed with the hiring of Mr Damon Sicore. In his first IRC #Wikimedia-Office chat the ugly head of Wikipedia centrism was found to be alive and well.

Mr Sicore made some important statements: "The most urgent issue seems to be software quality and shipping what we say we are going to ship, on time." and also "this urgency is compounded by the fact that we must be able to compete in mobile".

Wikidata is firmly part of us sharing in the sum of all knowledge and it is increasingly important at that. So far Wikidata was mostly about linking Wikipedia articles about the same subject. Increasingly available data is used in info-boxes. Once the wikidatification of multimedia files happens Wikidata needs to become editable from mobile phones and it needs to be easy and obvious in any and all languages..

Currently it is not easy nor obvious in any language.

This is not to say that it is not possible to make it increasingly easy and obvious in all languages. It is important because it is a requirement when the wikidatification of multi media files is to succeed. This is however only one use case where improved usability of Wikidata is essential for us to continue to share the sum of all the data we have available to us.

Only one challenge for Mr Sicore is the extend Wikidata will make a difference. There are many more he faces. I wish him well because his success is our success.
Thanks,
      GerardM

No comments: