[Foundation-l] IEEE LOM

Tue Jun 7 04:18:52 UTC 2005

Erik Moeller wrote:

> Gerard,
>
> first of all, pursuing cooperations like this will always be very slow 
> as long as it's a completely volunteer-driven effort. I think 
> Wikimedia absolutely needs several people who can work on such matters 
> full-time. Of course, you could ask the organization you have spoken 
> to if they would be willing to fund the preparation itself (technical 
> evaluation, research, planning, negotiation).
>
> However, I also think we will have a much better negotiation position 
> once Wikidata is past the prototype stage. Getting international 
> metadata for Wikipedia for free is indeed a fascinating prospect, but 
> I don't see it as an issue we need to address *right now*.
>
> Best,
>
> Erik

Erik,
This is the moment when a Dutch organisation asked to have our content 
in order to add metadata. Therefore this is the time we have to 
formulate an answer. When we do not, the opportunity to maximise the 
return of this effort will go past us. You are 100% correct that this 
will need Wikidata and we do agree that having more people working on 
Wikidata and Ultimate Wiktionary is a good thing.

This organisation needs to set up its infrastructure to host the 
Wikipedia content and add the IEEE LOM data, it will not benefit from 
similar efforts when it goes it alone. It is therefore in its own 
intrest to cooperate with us to have us host this data. The timeline for 
this project is not only for us to decide as we are not driving this 
effort so I disagree, we need to address this now and work out what the 
optimum timeline is.

Thanks,
    GerardM