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The Next Big Step For Wikidata: Forming a Hub For Researchers

Posted by Soulskill on from the hope-they-enjoy-popups-asking-them-for-money dept.

The ed17 writes Wikidata, Wikimedia's free linked database that supplies Wikipedia and its sister projects, is gearing up to submit a grant application to the EU that would expand Wikidata's scope by developing it as a science hub. ... This proposal is significant because no other open collaborative project ... can connect the free databases in the world across disciplinary and linguistic boundaries. ...the project will be capable of providing a unique open service: for the first time, that will allow both citizens and professional scientists from any research or language community to integrate their databases into an open global structure, to publicly annotate, verify, criticize and improve the quality of available data, to define its limits, to contribute to the evolution of its ontology, and to make all this available to everyone, without any restrictions on use and reuse.

5 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Jimmy Wales On Crack Again by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Folks, Wikipedia is a starting place, but its ever-changing content contributed by whoever is not acceptable for academic references. This has been discussed before.

    No one references Encyclopedia Britannica in their Masters Thesis...

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    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:Jimmy Wales On Crack Again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Put the pipe down, bro. Pointing out the obvious is cool and all, but kinda OT in this case.

      In case the room was too smokey to see your screen properly - from TFA; "...would expand Wikidata's scope by developing it as a science hub. The proposal, supported by more than 25 volunteers and half a dozen European institutions as project partners, aims to create a virtual research environment (VRE) that will enhance the project's capacity for freely sharing scientific data."

      We're not talking about wikipedia, but something new that uses wikidata as it's core.

  2. Editable scientific data? by Nutria · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can't be the only one who thinks that is a terribly bad idea... It would rip the guts right out of repeatability, and confidence that "this" is what $RESEARCHER found.

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    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    1. Re:Editable scientific data? by ranton · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can't be the only one who thinks that is a terribly bad idea... It would rip the guts right out of repeatability, and confidence that "this" is what $RESEARCHER found.

      Um, have you never heard of versioning? It would be pretty trivial to add the statement "Used the XXX v3.5.1 dataset to perform these calculations" to your research paper.

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      -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
  3. Give it a chance by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can't be the only one who thinks that is a terribly bad idea...

    When I first heard about wikipedia and the theory driving it I thought it was a terribly bad idea at the time... but ya know, I find it really useful. It's got lots of problems but on balance it's s lot more useful than problematic.

    We've identified many deep problems with scientific research on this very forum, and to my knowledge little progress has been made over the last decade.

    Can't we at least *try* different solutions?

    Where is it written(*) that the old ways are the best?

    (*) The script to Skyfall of course. I got that from Wikiquotes.