[OSM-talk] Could we just pause any wikidata edits for a month or two?

[Christoph Hormann]

On Tuesday 03 October 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
>
>    seeing that the matter is discussed quite intensively and opinions
> vary widely, could we perhaps agree to pause any (large scale)
> wikidata edits for a while until more members of our community have
> had a chance to form an opinion?

I think that is a good idea.

This would also give an opportunity to take the discourse from the 
exchange of spontaneous opinions and reactions with relatively little 
substance to a better founded and thought through basis you can 
reliably form an opinion from.

From my side a number of questions exist in the context of wikidata 
references in OSM where there does not seem to be a reliable answer at 
the moment although this would be important to form a qualified 
opinion.  In particular:

* How many of the wikidata=* tags currently in the database have been 
added through normal mapping (while adding or significantly modifying 
the object otherwise) and how many have been added through systematic 
efforts outside normal mapping?

* How many of the X:wikidata=* tags have been added through systematic 
efforts?  Are those derived from matching the existing X=* tags?  How 
many of those also have a wikidata=* tag?

* What practical applications exist for the wikidata IDs?  And i am not 
talking about theoretical ideas here but specific uses for practical 
purposes in actual use, in particular with open source implementation.

* To what extent has there been information transferred systematically 
from Wikidata and Wikipedia to OSM based on wikidata ID references 
(like adding names in different languages).  As others have explained 
this would be legally problematic and it would be important to know how 
common this is.

* How stable is the identity of what can be found under a certain 
Wikidata ID.  As mentioned there are cases where Wikidata aggregates 
several concepts under one ID (like an administrative unit and a 
populated place in case of cities/towns).  Would it be possible that 
this changes?  If yes, would the original ID be re-purposed or would it 
cease to exist?

* What is the qualification of Wikidata for having its IDs in OSM (both 
for wikidata=* and X:wikidata=*)?  Is there a particular objective 
criterion that qualifies it?  Would there be other external IDs that 
would also qualify under these criteria?  Is there a limit in the 
number of different external IDs OSM is going to accept?

Also i think it would be of great importance for OSM and a functioning 
communication in the community to have better documentation of:

* systematic wikidata ID addition/editing efforts (there seems to be 
nothing listed currently on 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Automated_edits_log)
* tag documentation of the wikidata tags.  This needs a lot of 
improvement.  Like:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:wikidata does not make clear if 
these document 1:1 relationships between OSM features and wikidata 
objects or not and what qualifies a wikidata ID to be 'about a 
feature'.  How does a mapper practically verify if a certain wikidata 
ID is correct on a certain feature?

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:brand:wikidata is plain wrong, 
brand:wikidata=* is not a machine-readable form of brand=*.  It in 
particular needs to tell the mapper what types of wikidata object 
should be referenced here and how a mapper can find the correct ID for 
a certain feature.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/