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The Next Big Step For Wikidata: Forming a Hub For Researchers
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.
But this is about Wikidata.
wikipedia started out as a web site where volunteers could edit articles, before entry into the nupedia website. nupedia is now dead. wikipedia has been engaging in bigger fund raising drives, and has more paid employees. Now it is trying to do more stuff to justify those more employees, just like when wikipedia spent a bunch of money trying to develop better wikipedia page editing software. I bet the heads of wikipedia now have bigger salaries.
I would just like the number of humans maintaining wikipedia to be small once again, and not try to do anything else.
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.
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.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
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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.
They have four partner universities and several other research institutions, most or all of who already have one or more full-time staff dedicated to help projects with their grant application process.
Yes, EU grant applications are big and cumbersone - though the payoff is commensurate - but the process is not going to be the main hurdle. With all the available expertise at their disposal, if they can't navigate the application process then they're unlikely to successfully steer a major project over several years either.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
The main problem with scientific data is retention. Often the results are kept, but the data that led to the results is long lost. Even 5 years later, it's hard to find the data. There is a reason for this: there's a lot! Regardless of what their database size, most particle physics experiments can fill it in less than a day. It's not technologically feasible to gather the information into one system, at our current level of technology.
While wikipedia has editing and flame wars problems, this project would end with similar problems surrounding deletion. What do you keep? How do you know where the break throughs will be made: the ones that make revisiting old experiments and data necessary? One cannot predict the path inspiration will take. Who decides what gets deleted: an editor, an admin, by public vote? This is what will cause the project to fail out of the starting gate. In the event they do succeed, what happens when their funding runs out? We've already established that the main problem is from too much data for practical backup... that only leaves the inevitable fall into oblivion.
In closing, I do offer a ray of hope: the time is fast approaching when we will reach the prerequisite technological level. Take a look at the work HP is currently doing: http://www.engadget.com/2010/0... This technology, at the optimal level, (I crunched some numbers, and it definitely would not be the case with the first iteration) can store all the world's data, and then some, on a device the size of a garbage can. At that point deletion, and all the problems outlined above, become nullified. Until we reach that level, this is a pipe dream, doomed to fail in a quagmire of politics.