Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

Structured Wikiquote

This is a proposal for a structured multilingual version of Wikiquote.

This is a proposal for a new Wikimedia sister project.
Status of the proposal
Statusrejected
Reasonno interest in years. Pecopteris (talk) 18:08, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Technical requirements
Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T71753

Proposed by

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Ricordisamoa 17:44, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative names

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  • Wikiquote
  • Multilingual Wikiquote
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Domain names

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Demo

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Roadmap

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  • The Wikibase extension should be adjusted to handle quotations properly.
  • When the extension is out of alpha status, a test repo (test.wikiquote.org) should be set up with the very latest version, as the Test Wikidata is now.
  • When the basic features are all implemented in the software, it will be deployed on the stable repo under a new domain, maybe even replacing the current multi-language portal.
  • The Test Wikiquote repo will become an unstable environment to test new features, just like Test Wikidata.
  • The existing language-specific Wikiquote communities will gradually start to migrate their quotations to the new JSON-based format. Some experienced Wikidata users could also help, since they are familiar with structured data.
  • Most of currently active sysops of single-language Wikiquote editions will become administrators on the multilingual counterpart, too.
  • Once every quotation, policy and help page of a language edition has been 'migrated', that edition can be closed permanently. Of course, this process will at first involve smaller languages, and 'incubated' ones (even smaller: example).

Details

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Items

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Quotations will be hosted on separate items, as Wikidata's, so having titles in form of IDs: Q1, Q2, Q1234567, etc.

Bots

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An apposite Python script should be developed to migrate every quotation listed on language-specific subdomains. At first, only original quotations should be imported, using advanced algorithms to detect if a similar quotation has been already inserted.

Contexts

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Each quotation could be linked to a "context". That could be a Wikidata item about a work (references to chapter and paragraph should also be given), but also about an interview or TV show.

Translations

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Every quotation should have only one original version, but could have several translated versions, each with a proper source.

External use

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Quotations could be transcluded via a parser function: {{#quote:Q1}} will render as "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind".

An apposite Lua function (possibly more advanced than the wikitext counterpart) should be included in Scribunto.

QOTD

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Any eligible quotation could be voted by users to become a "Featured Quote", a future "Quote of the day" or "Quote of the year".

Sister projects integration

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Authorship would be provided via Wikidata.

Quotes should be linked to OmegaWiki entries and/or Wikidata items of things they are about.

If and when OmegaWiki is adopted by the Wikimedia Foundation, it could link Wikiquote items as use cases to better explain a word or concept.

On Wikisource, notable sentences within a work would be automatically highlighted, pointing to the corresponding Wikiquote entries.

Licensing

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Quotes from copyrighted sources (and so under fair use) would be distinguished from those in Public Domain, and could even be excluded from database dumps. Translated versions by Wikiquote users could also be released under a separate (CC-BY-SA compatible) license.

Users' quotations

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Wikiquote users could list quotes by their own, too (with community approval, of course). Maybe in an apposite namespace or with special tags.

Embedded Quotes

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Wikiquote will make an embed feature like embedded tweets with a link to see more quotes from the author.

People interested

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  1. Well, interested is a proper word to call what i am now. But I do hope to see detailedmost description including technical aspects. --Base (talk) 20:36, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @Base: I have added a more detailed documentation, hope it's enough. --Ricordisamoa 23:45, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Of course, the current language editions of Wikiquote are rather messy as the default MediaWiki installation doesn't really provide an ideal environment for a collection of quotations. Though, I'm not sure whether this here is the right place to go as we are talking about improving an existent project rather than creating a new one. Vogone talk 03:29, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @Vogone: the new project would be created under the same Wikiquote domain (as Old Wikisource opposed to language versions), and would share the same principles and purpose. Though, I conceive its GUI and environment more like Wikidata than like existing Wikiquotes. That's why I'm going straight through Meta-Wiki. --Ricordisamoa 23:38, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Hm, I imagine it will be hard to merge all these existant projects to a "new" Wikiquote especially sonce not all Wq projects handle the quotes in the same way (with the same formatting etc.). If this passes, will the current subdomains co-exist for a transitional period? Will they be closed at all? I know, both questions are already answered in the proposal, but I don't think it is that easy to decide over a closure of a whole sister project in a new project proposal, especially since there is also no current process for closing whole sister projects in place. Thus, I imagine this to be an additional problem as well (if we would have to convince every single Wikiquote community to give up their wiki). Anyway, I am quite aware that Wikiquote has massive problems with attracting new contributors and that this is also largely caused by the horrible environment the current software provides to Wikiquote editors. So I would support any attempts to get Wikiquote into a direction of the proposed "Structured Wikiquote". Vogone talk 20:09, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Replacing all language editions of Wikiquote is the ultimate purpose of my proposal. However, a complete transition could require several years, so the shutdown won't be on the short-term roadmap if the project is accepted. --Ricordisamoa 23:05, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    The ultimate purpose of the proposal should be clearly stated in the lede section. A proposal to merge, restructure, and replace existing wikis is not just another version.
    Though I can understand why someone who finds the structure of existing wikis unsatisfactory might choose not to edit them, I am frankly atonished that someone with a total of approximately* one (1) mainspace edits in all of the existing Wikiquote projects to date would propose such a thing.
    * Approximately, because I only checked ones where you have more than ten edits in total.
    ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:35, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  3. —DerHexer (Talk) 22:16, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  4. --DangSunM (talk) 15:30, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  5. --Nizil Shah (talk) 18:54, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  6. --Rezonansowy (talk) 13:23, 3 February 2014 (UTC) Translations could be done with mw:Extension:Translate.[reply]
    @Rezonansowy: that is not the way the Wikibase extension currently works. The Translate extension is for translating wikicode, and I don't know if and how it can be adapted for structured data – nice idea though. --Ricordisamoa 19:14, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  7. I quite like the idea, the current Wikiquote is unorganized and has a huge amount of room for improvement. I would prefer a more obvious differentiation like "New Wikiquote", but that may just be personal preference. I would recommend contacting some WMF Design Team members to see if they could donate some time mocking up a potential UI for each quotation, you could really make it look and function great given that it'd essentially be a hard reset. --Nicereddy (talk) 04:52, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  8. --Mr Wiki Pro (talk) 00:53, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  9. This looks well organized. One thing: some works have been written in multiple languages, so the original language may be ambiguous at rare times. PC-XT (talk) 12:04, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Glaisher [talk] 12:48, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Whaledad (talk) 15:02, 14 March 2014 (UTC) I would like to make sure that we have solid criteria for acceptance of quotes into this repository. Too many Wikiquote sites today are just a collection of sentences and sometimes even paragraphs that somebody found relevant. The German WQ has the best written criteria, describing that a quote is only a quote once it is quoted by others. In other words: a quote needs both primary and secondary sources to validate that it is already a quote, before WQ makes it a quote. Because in the later case WQ becomes the secondary source, which can and should never be our objective. Similarly, translations of quotes should only be added as and when local language secondary sources quote the original quote in local language. WQ should NEVER become the source of quote translations.[reply]
  12. I have kept busy adding quotes to multiple Wikiquote projects from public domain compilations of quote translations. Throughout this experience I have developed the sense that the basic unit of information dealt with by Wikiquote is the quote, and that our readers would be best served by having quotes associated with various points of information (author, date, work, notable instances of misattribution, keywords contained in the quote itself, keywords for areas to which the quote is related even if not found in the quote itself). Ideally, a user should be able to do a keyword search to get quotes about, e.g., friendship (even if the quote itself does not contain the word, and excluding quotes that happen to contain the word but are not relevant to the topic), and should further be able to isolate sets of quotes by date range, author, or even author characteristics, such as quotes by U.S. Presidents or quotes by Nobel Peace Prize winners. BD2412 T 18:14, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I have often thought about how database management technology might be used to enhance Wikiquote projects in various ways, but I have serious reservations about this approach. For one, I think the intersection of quote lovers and database mavens is a rather small population to author and manage a wiki that "anyone can edit". As a (retired) database professional and systems manager myself, I find it hard to imagine how to curate content in a stream of edits to atomized items with titles like "Q1234567". ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:28, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  13. The new system should use proper <blockqoute> and list markup - a bad failing of the current sites. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:41, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  14. I gotta say   Oppose, little sad, it'll freeze all Wq/(codes), so it seems to start 3rd betawv/oldws like wiki. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 09:04, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    What do you mean? How would it be a betawv/oldws-like wiki? I don't see the similarities here (BetaWV is a discussion hub + incubator and OldWS is merely an incubator while Structured Wikiquote would be neither of them). Vogone talk 21:57, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I have started a few tests at incubator:Wq/mul and my thought would use sortable tables, not prefixed asterisks, to distinguish from language subdomains.--Jusjih (talk) 03:59, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  15.   Support.
    • There's no need to get the quotes' information duplicated through languages. It makes hard to verify.
    • Using a multilanguage project, one could see every quote (translated or not), and suggest contribute with a translation.
    • In order to do the transition, we could:
      1. First use something like {{#invoke:quotes|fromauthor}} on every author page, and {{#invoke:quotes|fromtopic}} on every topic page. It would show every quote, and would be interactive (see later).
      2. All new pages would be created direct to wikidata (you type quote, author, and optional info like topic, work, date, etc.).
      3. Go moving quotes from the wikitext to wikidata.
      4. When all quotes are moved, protect the page (including a interface to update the current existing and add more).
      5. Once every page is empty (all quotes are transcluded from wikidata) and protected, every page is redirected to the multilingual project (es.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein -> wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein?setlang=es).
    • Every quote could be interactive:
      • Edit quote
      • Add/Edit/Remove Reference
      • Add/Edit/Remove Work, page, paragraph (or search by, because it would be links)
      • Add/Edit/Remove Date (or search by, because it would be a link)
      • Add/Edit/Remove Topics (or search by, because it would be links)
      • Add/Edit/Remove Type (verified, attributed, wrong)
    • Every author page also could be interactive:
      • Add/remove Quotes
      • Add/Edit/Remove Author's information
      • Sort by: Date, topic, translated or not
    • Every topic page also could be interactive:
      • Add/remove Quotes
      • Add/Edit/Remove Topic's information
      • Sort by: Date, author, translated or not
    • We could direct transclude quotes into wikipedia.
    • It would be easier prevent and search vandalism and wrong quotes!!
    Eloy (talk) 18:48, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  16. I   Support. I am here because I had the same idea in an indipendent way, and I was looking for more information. In a post-wikidata era, with a growing multicultural knowledge, it is quite natural to consider the single quote as an "item" that needs to be translated on the same platform, importing from wikidata key biographic or historic information as a general introduction. In addition to that, content translation is blooming and considering the quote as part of the bigger archive of translated items seem logical. If the quote is already translated, every time you need it in your language, you have a translation (or more translations of course) available with a clic. The unified platform will also facilitate cross-referencing, access to original quote, and reduce the amount of managing activities.--Alexmar983 (talk) 15:23, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  17.   Support! I would definately be willing to contribute. Caliburn (talk) 16:46, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Strong   Support. One centralized place for every quote, with multiple translations. IMHO we must slow down with the paradigma 1 knowledge + many languages = many sites. This will lead us also to better quality with less energy. Also this data will become machine w/r. --AlessioMela (talk) 20:33, 14 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  19.   Support This would make Wikiquote much more usefull and reliable actually. —Ah3kal (talk) 10:23, 16 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  20. Oppose. This is a misuse of the Wikidata extension, and would create another betawikiversity/oldwikisource. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 18:25, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  21.   Support, but I need secure connection to this demo per Requests for new languages/Wikiquote Multilingual, in order to merge my recently started tests at incubator.--Jusjih (talk) 03:59, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Oppose while I cannot securely see the demo. Please fix the demo or I will just test incubator:Wq/mul.--Jusjih (talk) 02:47, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    If no one fixes the insecure demo, may I propose dumping the Structured Wikiquote and concentrating on incubator:Wq/mul, please?--Jusjih (talk) 00:51, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Would someone make secure connection for the demo? Manually editing sortable tables at incubator:Wq/mul is too hard for new users. A form like Special:Upload may be better for users to enter when the date, where the place, who the author, what work, which portion of a work to quote, and any potentially useful remark explaining why quote, to generate sortable tables.--Jusjih (talk) 04:28, 19 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  22.   Support This would be an incredibly valuable resource for Word Sense Disambiguation if it was linked up to OmegaWiki or even WikiData's new Lexeme namespace for providing a multitude of usage examples for any given word or word sense. I would be very happy to contribute as much as I can to this. --Liamjamesperritt (talk) 05:27, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    How is your experience seeing the demo? I get "insecure connection".--Jusjih (talk) 02:25, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I also am unable to access the demo due to an "insecure connection". Although I very much support the concept of a structured Wikiquote, it would be very helpful if we could actually access the demo. In my opinion, this resource would best be implemented as a separate namespace in Wikidata, as discussed here. --Liamjamesperritt (talk) 01:11, 21 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. Hopefully Wikidata/Development/Wikiquote will work well to replace my incubator:Wq/mul that is too hard for newbies.--Jusjih (talk) 02:41, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  23.   Support Yes, indeed. Wikiquote can’t be used as a database and thus reused by other websites. There is also a problem of duplicated quotes (i.e quotes on en.q pages Life & Nelson Mandela). Also Wikiquote isn’t a multilingual-wiki; meaning that you have to re create a page of an author dozens of time to translate the same quotes + it slows the work as communities don’t meet others so much. Also WikiquoteS aren’t really known, so maybe merging it into a single community will make it famous (especially with #Embedded Quotes). --CreativeC (talk) 17:20, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  24.   Support, as per CreativeC Nigos (talk) 07:05, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  25.   Support Rubbish computer (Talk: Contribs) 13:43, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  26.   Support --沈澄心✉ 09:52, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  27.   Support I think Wikiquote really suffers from a structure problem, articles are incredibly chaotic and it's very difficult to make sense of sources, priority or the order being used. Structured data would help better present the information as well as making it computer accessible. Agucova (talk) 03:50, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  28.   Support --Tmv (talk) 01:14, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  29.   Support --Tinker Bell ★ ♥ 23:27, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  30. Strong   Support--Shizhao (talk) 07:16, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  31. unsure as to the precise implementation, but generally appreciative of efforts that could help automate bindings between projects, for example wikisource <--> wikiquote. Arlo Barnes (talk) 21:31, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  32.    Support - Hérisson grognon 12:58, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  33. Oppose. We don’t need to make everything like Wikidata. 2001:569:BEB6:C400:CC11:B40F:447C:26A9 23:32, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  34.   Support As someone who worked on the Schema.org properties to support Quotations, I think this proposal would align quite well with our work already done in Schema.org and what is already provided as structured data for Quotations throughout many websites. See https://schema.org/Quotation
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