Re: [Wikimedia-l] Stack Exchange vs. Wikimedia

2013-09-23 Thread Matthew Flaschen 

On 09/23/2013 12:20 PM, Jan Kučera wrote:

Hi there,

is anyone out here participating in any of the Stack Exchange projects?


Yes, I've participated significantly in both Wikimedia projects and 
Stack Overflow.



Do people here still really think voting is a bad thing and wiki is the
easiest way to collaborate?


It depends how the community is intended to work.  Wikipedia is about a 
community seeking to craft encyclopedia articles that are verifiable and 
NPOV.  A well-written (and compliant with the policies) article isn't 
necessarily popular with readers, and vice versa (Justin Bieber would 
probably get a huge number of votes even if it weren't written very 
well), and doesn't necessary fit any one editor's POV.


Stack Overflow is about individual experts sharing solutions to specific 
problems.  Individual posts are wikis, but the unspoken rule is to use 
this in a limited fashion.  Typically, people are expected to make minor 
fixes while still maintaining the original poster's voice.



I have repeatedly had proposals for employing some voting mechanism at
least on the back-stage, but no one was listening to me...


This email isn't clear about how you actually propose to use voting.

A good thing about the Stack Exchange sites is that they all use the 
exact same license as Wikipedia (and some of the other Wikimedia sites), 
which is CC-BY-SA 3.0.  We could probably take advantage of that a 
little more to migrate reference-like content (while still being 
cautious about only importing appropriate stuff).


Matt Flaschen

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Stack Exchange vs. Wikimedia

2013-09-23 Thread Martijn Hoekstra 
On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 6:49 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

> Jan Kučera, 23/09/2013 18:20:
>
>  Hi there,
>>
>> is anyone out here participating in any of the Stack Exchange projects?
>>
>
> http://area51.stackexchange.**com/proposals/49276/wikis
>
>
I posted on that before, and I do encourgage everybody to collaborate
there. Stackexchange is much better in Q&A than we are.



>  Do
>> people here still really think voting is a bad thing and wiki is the
>> easiest way to collaborate?
>>
>> I have repeatedly had proposals for employing some voting mechanism at
>> least on the back-stage, but no one was listening to me...
>>
>
> Relevant bugzilla ticket (filed by you, I know): <
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.**org/show_bug.cgi?id=29923#c13
> >
>
> Nemo
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Stack Exchange vs. Wikimedia

2013-09-23 Thread Federico Leva (Nemo) 

Jan Kučera, 23/09/2013 18:20:

Hi there,

is anyone out here participating in any of the Stack Exchange projects?


http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/49276/wikis


Do
people here still really think voting is a bad thing and wiki is the
easiest way to collaborate?

I have repeatedly had proposals for employing some voting mechanism at
least on the back-stage, but no one was listening to me...


Relevant bugzilla ticket (filed by you, I know): 



Nemo

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Stack Exchange vs. Wikimedia

2013-09-23 Thread Martijn Hoekstra 
On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 6:20 PM, Jan Kučera  wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> is anyone out here participating in any of the Stack Exchange projects?


Yes, I participate in Stackoverflow mainly


> Do people here still really think voting is a bad thing and wiki is the
> easiest way to collaborate?
>

No, and meh. But voting on a consensus driven model is bad. And a wiki is a
decent way to collaborate. It is starting to show its age (real time
collaboration as i.e. etherpad is far more awesome, but we're a decent bit
away from that). Q&A sites aren't a way to collaborate. They fill a
different niche.

>
> I have repeatedly had proposals for employing some voting mechanism at
> least on the back-stage, but no one was listening to me...
>
> Cheers,
> Kozuch
>

That's probably because voting is a bad way to create consensus.



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Stack Exchange vs. Wikimedia

2013-09-23 Thread Amir E. Aharoni 
I participate in StackOverflow - asking, answering, voting, editing
existing answers. Voting is probably good for a site that is structured
around short answers and short questions.

I'm not sure that it would work for Wikipedia, where articles are expected
to grow to multiple pages over a long time with contributions of different
people.

Also, StackOverflow answers often become the de-facto main source for
answers to many questions, because many people ask about things that are
not documented well. We are in an age when a good programming language
manual is not really good enough if people need to spend a minute searching
through its index, so people prefer to google or to ask on StackOverflow.
And it's OK for software development, because if a good answer solves a
focused problem, it is later useful to many people. It is not good enough
for Wikipedia, which should not be the final source of information, even if
in practice it actually is. So you cannot measure the quality of an article
or the reliability of a person with votes.

As for encouraging people to come back to the site and to contribute more -
yes, it works nicely on StackOverflow and on similar sites like PerlMonks,
Quora, Slashdot, and others, but for Wikipedia it would be too artificial
for the above reasons. I am thrilled about the new Notifications (a.k.a.
Echo) in this regard - the indicator at the top, which shows mentions and
thanks is very encouraging to me as a contributor (and this has nothing to
do with my capacity as a WMF contractor), and I hear many similar positive
comments from other editors.


--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬


2013/9/23 Jan Kučera 

> Hi there,
>
> is anyone out here participating in any of the Stack Exchange projects? Do
> people here still really think voting is a bad thing and wiki is the
> easiest way to collaborate?
>
> I have repeatedly had proposals for employing some voting mechanism at
> least on the back-stage, but no one was listening to me...
>
> Cheers,
> Kozuch
> ___
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> 
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