Topic on User talk:Wostr/Structured Discussions Archive 1

In this edit you wrote, "en.wiki does not want to use WD data". Once upon a time, I thought that the whole point of Wikidata was to be used by the 'pedias, and while it took a while for that linking to get off the ground, at one point it seemed like it was actually picking up. So I'm more than a little dismayed to hear that there are strong wishes not to use WD data at all, after all. Do you have any links to discussions or decisions formalizing this attitude?

(I'm not arguing with you or doubting you, though; as a matter of fact I just came across w:Wikipedia:Short description, which explains that "Initially short descriptions were drawn from the Description field in Wikidata entries, but because of concerns about including information directly from another project, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) made provision for these to be overwritten by short descriptions generated within Wikipedia", followed by the direction that "Eventually, all articles should have a short description template", i.e., according to that page there should be no descriptions drawn from Wikidata at all. Foo.)

I can't give you any links, because — as I'm not a regular en.wiki user — I don't know where such discussions were held and I'm not familiar with en.wiki discussion/archive page structure. However, I remember for example a RFC in en.wiki some two years ago(?) about use of WD in en.wiki infoboxes and the most popular option was to not use WD at all (the summary of this RFC was something like: WD could be used in en.wiki if there is some assurance that the data meets en.wiki rules /verifiability etc./). I think there were notifications in Project chat about several discussions in en.wiki about use of WD data and I never heard that en.wiki users are eager to use WD. Frankly, I can't blame them, I have many reservations about use of WD data in my home wiki (pl.wiki), because policies about verifiability and quality of data are much less restrictive here than in pl.wiki. However, I try to use WD data where I have a lot of confidence that articles will not lose quality or verifiability, but also to use article's (infoboxes) data in such a way as to verify the WD data or add sources to WD statements.

About 'Short description': this is how it should be done in every project. Wikidata 'description' wasn't meant to be a description for Wikipedia articles, but the WMF thought otherwise. This WMF mistake resulted in more people now opposing WD data at all, because they see that WD description can be vandalised from IP without any knowledge of Wikipedia users and sometimes such description remains unreverted for days, weeks or even months.

All fair points. Thanks.