| feel free to edit this page to add more pros & cons. Use discussion page for the discussion |
With advance of Graphs and Maps, we run into the problem of data storage location. While Wikidata provides a good location for "facts" (small pieces of data), we need a different place to store "blobs" - small data sets in a structured format like JSON or CSV. At the moment, blob data like a map outline is stored as raw unreadable wikitext. Instead, it should be shown as tables or images, e.g. this example. Assuming we implement it as wiki pages with "Data:" namespace, what is the best location for the community to manage it?
See also: RFC How to deal with open datasets and DataNamespace.
wikidata.org
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PROs
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CONs
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- Makes sense semantically - all data in one place
- Metadata can be stored as Wikidata items
- Community is more technical
- Community is more willing to experiment with new approaches
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- Wikidata is structured around concepts. Datasets are usually structured around the same data for many topics.
- Possible solution: Use the W3C standard for an RDF representation of a Data Cube
- People are already now having issues understanding the above and want to upload their spreadsheet to Wikidata. This would further make this really hard to explain and understand.
- We can not have a mix of licenses which would surely be expected if we go along this path.
- We are there to expose the data we have in a uniform way to Wikipedia, the other sister projects and third parties. This would make this impossible.
- Wikidata is at the core a knowledge base. Not a place to put a dataset.
- People expect to be able to query all the data in Wikidata in a uniform way. This would not be possible.
- We are building data quality tools that all resolve around the way data is stored in Wikidata right now.
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See also RFC: Data namespace blob storage on wikidata.org
commons.wikimedia.org
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CONs
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- Already stores other types of shared content like images, multimedia
- Each piece of content comes with its own licensing
- Community is well versed in legal issues
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- Content has to be public domain or freely licensed in both the source country and the U.S.
- The aim of Wikimedia Commons is to provide a media file repository
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en.wikipedia.org
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CONs
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- High number of editors
- More anti-vandalism bots
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- Implies it is for English language wiki
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<newdomain>.wikimedia.org
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CONs
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- No legacy issues - new site means new rules and licensing
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- Hard to build a new community
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meta.wikimedia.org, mediawiki.org, ...
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CONs
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- Semantically these sites are for organizational matters, not for the actual content.
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