Wikidata/Notes/Future

This page collects possible future use cases. Please describe here how you would like to use Wikidata, or what functionality you want to see added to it in the future. Give examples! Feel free to expand and discuss, add questions, make sub pages, etc.

Bibliographies

• Wikidata will contain bibliographic records as part of the system for providing source references for individual statements.
• Such bibliographic records could be collected and curated in topic specific lists
• Community curated descriptions and evaluations of individual sources would be very helpful too.
• Would it make sense to bulk import bibliographic records, or is it better to import individual records on demand?
• Note that information about Works can be modeled as data items, but information about manifestations (see en:FRBR) are (usually?) fixed records from an authoritative source that should rarely if ever change.
• Interesting in this context: Linking Library Data to Wikipedia YouTube video by OCLC

Wikisource

• Wikisource needs meta-data about the documents being transcribed. Currently, this info needs to be kept in sync between the file description page on commons.
• This information will usually be on the manifestations level (see en:FRBR, compare Bibliograpies) and would reference data items for the respective Work and Author. Information on the Item or file level (i.e. about the scan itself) would be maintained on Commons.

Notes from the Wikimania 2012 unconference session on cataloging in Wikisource: https://hackpad.com/rOe0OJuM6tl#Wikisource-incorporating-meta-data/cataloging-

I want to build a example to walk through, but I will leave a quick summary. First stage is can involves an improvememt to index pages already in the works Much meta-data can brought in from the djvu file. Tpt is working on this. The idea seems to be much of this form is filled in with computer magic and the Wikisourcerer will check it over and save. This simplifies the creation of index page (a current pain point) and with the surrounding tools Tpt has in place the API will harvest the metadata. This good in many way but only work at the volume level (imagine I clarified with fancy librarian term or for precision replace this with it). Sometimes the volume is not the best place to keep meta-data. An anthology of poetry can many poems by many poets on many subjects with non-unique titles.

The second phase is to have a gadget that deposit a template of meta-data on a wikipage. Where a wikipage contains a single poem from a volume of poetry, the meta-data on the in the reading namespace will be more useful than that on the index page ascribed to the volume. It should look familiar to the index page input form for usability. Now you have probably been thinking only of the meta-data generally gathered in card catalogs. We can actually gather more bibliographic data than that, we are not paper. As long as we using a form to collect the basuc information, we might as well ask the curator what the work is about (dc subject). We will ask that the choice be defined by Wikipedia urls rather than plain text. Which Alexandre Dumas is the author? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas,_père (imagine however as the wikidata identity URL not the textual title of the moment) What is it about? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarlem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampjaar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultivar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment (again imagine the wikidata identity URL not the textual title of the moment) http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Subject&SA=Tulip%20Mania%2C%201634%2D1637%20Fiction%2E&PID=Uo4cpUgPWiQ_SX7DmfXDBsEY2DCpX&BROWSE=1&HC=28&SID=4 (but imagine or fix using the URL that use LOC magic numbers). . . If there is no Wikipedia article for the label hold off during stage 2. The gadget deposit this all as a template like the stage 1 index page template. The API can do magic with the templates.

The third phase is Wikidata harvesting and incorporating all the data from the templates and superseding them and the earlier API interface. Now an extention is written to replace the template-creating gadget and diriectly submit the labels to WikiData. For the curators inputting labels data transfer should be a near seamless transition done by bots and the extention should be designed around the workflow discoveries made whe using the gadget. The biggest difference will be that now when there is no Wikipedia article to link to for a label, the curator makes a WikData stub. A Wikidata stub is in functionally Wikipedia redlink with the improvement of being associated with blurb useful for clarification and disambiguation if needed. Of course, now the labels placed in earlier stages and in future can be used for all kinds of Wikidata magic. I will work the example of what would then be possible to associate in very meaningful but currently unavailable ways in the coming weeks. Please edit the above as especially fix the terminology that is lacking.

Commons

• The information in the creator namespace could be transferred to Wikidata, where it con be maintained for use on Commons, Wikipedia, and other projects.
• Institution templates may draw information from Wikidata
• License templates may draw information from Wikidata, though that kind of info tends to be "primary", unsourced and uncontested.

• The "information" templates on the file description pages can be replaced by structured data records maintained as subpages or "attachments" to the page. The mechanisms for storing and editing them would be very similart to the ones used on the Wikidata project, and they may be implemented by the same extension (Wikibase) or another extension building on top of Wikibase.
• Such meta-info about files often mixes information on the file, the item and possibly the manifestation level (see en:FRBR). Most of it will be primary, unsourced and uncontested, but in some cases, it may be useful to be able to provide references.

Authoritative Records

Several ideas described above use data records that, unlike the data items corresponding to Wikipedia articles, contain primary, uncontested and unsourced information. Examples:

• Bibliographic data from an authoritative source like a library
• File meta data maintained by the wiki community.

In this cases, properties have one single definite value, and provenance information can be given on the record level instead of individual statements.

Questions:

• should such records use the same data model as full fledged data items?
• should they be in a separate namespace?
• is the distinction really this clear cut, in which cases could both types of information (sourced and contested vs authoritative or editorial) be mixed?
• would it make sense to mark some properties as editorial? or some usages of properties?

OpenSeaMap

Database for an international and multilingual Watersport-Wiki:

• Harbours
• List of Lights
• Dive spots
• Whitewater sections

Wikiquote

• individual quotes as data items
• tagged by author, time, topic, etc
• automatic lists

Wiktionary

...

Wikispecies

To represent the taxonomic hierarchy, Wikispecies currently uses nested Templates, one nesting level for each hierarchy level. While this is working solution that guarantees consistency, contrary to the mission of Wikispecies the knowledge expressed in this structure is not reusable by the Wikipedias. Similarly other information in Wikispecies could be more easily reused by Wikipedia and other Open Knowledge projects if most or all of it would be migrated to Wikidata.

World University and School

• World University and School (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University) would like to use Wikidata for development. In addition to the resources itemized in this WUaS SUBJECT TEMPLATE - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/SUBJECT_TEMPLATE - WUaS would also like, as a few highlights, to develop an universal translator with Wikidata in 3,000-8,000 languages, building on Google Translate +. WUaS would also like to incorporate virtual place-coordinates to/from Wikidata for virtual world spaces, and potentially for all museums in all languages which have some free art resources online, for example. And WUaS would like to develop a Music School, for all instruments and in all languages, as wiki pages, and also for collaborative-real time music making, eventually.

More

• Wikidata/Queries
• Wikidata/Infoboxes
• Wikidata/Notes/CKAN