[Foundation-l] Geonotice improvements that could make Wikinews great (among other benefits)
One of the great frustrations of Wikinews for me is that it doesn't have a system for identifying and pointing users toward opportunities to get out into the offline world and do original reporting. A fine-grained cross-project opt-in geonotice system could be a solution. Here's how I imagine it working: there is a new opt-in geonotice (in addition to the current one that reaches everyone in the specified geography). For the opt-in geonotice (which would hopefully be able to reach across projects, since many causal Wikinewsies visit that site only rarely) any trusted user could add new items to let nearby people know about reporting or photography opportunities. For these opt-in notices, we would not need to lock down the ability to add items like we do for the current geonotice system (it's a fully protected page), since people who opt-in will expect a bit a noise. So, for example, I would set a notice that Senator Chris Dodd is holding a public discussion about health care reform on such-and-such date in Hartford, Connecticut. I mark this as a photo opportunity and a reporting opportunity. The system sets a default radius (or better yet, users specify the radius they want to be notified within) and everyone within x kilometers of Hartford who has opted in to the notice gets a watchlist message pointing to more details. I can imagine a wide range of tips and events that could be spread to the right people with such a system. This would do a couple things: it would draw in new users to Wikinews, and given enough participation it could provide a resource that is useful for professional journalists. Journalists are eager to figure out useful ways to tap the knowledge of amateurs, and a widely used geography-based tip-line is something that Wikimedia still has a chance to be the first organization to do well. I think finding a way to play a major part in the ongoing changes in the journalism world ought to be a high priority for the Foundation. -Sage Ross (User:Ragesoss) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
- experienced professional reference-work writers (and we should help them find ways to sustain themselves, particularly in niche markets -- one way is by distributing the underlying work needed to find and organize data). there is room in the world-of-WP for effective, sustainable POV and specialist works SJ - Just curious...where in WP do you think POV and specialist works could fit? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
When I say world of WP I mean world post-WP -- the world we live in, in which certain businesses are failing now that basic reliable information and data are available freely... It would be healthy to see compatibly-licensed projects that use different sets of core principles; not just wikinfo (for instance) but also POV specialist reference works. There is an audience for that, and they should also be encouraged to contribute to free knowledge. And if someone can find a way to keep professional encyclopedists from dying out as a breed, that would be good. I don't want to see other reference works go out of business; I do want to see them adopt free licenses -- data, overviews, and reference-style knowledge should all be free. SJ On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Kul Takanao Wadhwakwad...@wikimedia.org wrote: - experienced professional reference-work writers (and we should help them find ways to sustain themselves, particularly in niche markets -- one way is by distributing the underlying work needed to find and organize data). there is room in the world-of-WP for effective, sustainable POV and specialist works SJ - Just curious...where in WP do you think POV and specialist works could fit? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
As specific examples: It would be great if every publisher of any sort that does basic data mining and research into primary sources were to share that work directly on WP and sister projects. Publishers using free media and spending time and effort vetting their licenses should update the license info (with any high-fidelity assurances they tracked down) directly on Commons. Librarians curating an exhibit, even in cases where they are not willing to or cannot make their digital works available under the right license, can share their curatorial comments and bibliographies. As long as professional publishers and curators feel unwelcome on the projects, they won't discover the ways in which they have already-free knowledge to contribute. SJ On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Samuel Kleinmeta...@gmail.com wrote: When I say world of WP I mean world post-WP -- the world we live in, in which certain businesses are failing now that basic reliable information and data are available freely... It would be healthy to see compatibly-licensed projects that use different sets of core principles; not just wikinfo (for instance) but also POV specialist reference works. There is an audience for that, and they should also be encouraged to contribute to free knowledge. And if someone can find a way to keep professional encyclopedists from dying out as a breed, that would be good. I don't want to see other reference works go out of business; I do want to see them adopt free licenses -- data, overviews, and reference-style knowledge should all be free. SJ On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Kul Takanao Wadhwakwad...@wikimedia.org wrote: - experienced professional reference-work writers (and we should help them find ways to sustain themselves, particularly in niche markets -- one way is by distributing the underlying work needed to find and organize data). there is room in the world-of-WP for effective, sustainable POV and specialist works SJ - Just curious...where in WP do you think POV and specialist works could fit? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
Noted, and added to strategic planning page :) On Jul 29, 2009, at 6:28 PM, Samuel Klein wrote: As specific examples: It would be great if every publisher of any sort that does basic data mining and research into primary sources were to share that work directly on WP and sister projects. Publishers using free media and spending time and effort vetting their licenses should update the license info (with any high-fidelity assurances they tracked down) directly on Commons. Librarians curating an exhibit, even in cases where they are not willing to or cannot make their digital works available under the right license, can share their curatorial comments and bibliographies. As long as professional publishers and curators feel unwelcome on the projects, they won't discover the ways in which they have already-free knowledge to contribute. SJ On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Samuel Kleinmeta...@gmail.com wrote: When I say world of WP I mean world post-WP -- the world we live in, in which certain businesses are failing now that basic reliable information and data are available freely... It would be healthy to see compatibly-licensed projects that use different sets of core principles; not just wikinfo (for instance) but also POV specialist reference works. There is an audience for that, and they should also be encouraged to contribute to free knowledge. And if someone can find a way to keep professional encyclopedists from dying out as a breed, that would be good. I don't want to see other reference works go out of business; I do want to see them adopt free licenses -- data, overviews, and reference-style knowledge should all be free. SJ On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Kul Takanao Wadhwakwad...@wikimedia.org wrote: - experienced professional reference-work writers (and we should help them find ways to sustain themselves, particularly in niche markets -- one way is by distributing the underlying work needed to find and organize data). there is room in the world-of-WP for effective, sustainable POV and specialist works SJ - Just curious...where in WP do you think POV and specialist works could fit? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
I mean basic educational information about how things work, and how they relate to one another; data and facts; and maps, statistics, and visualizations of this sort of knowledge. You cannot copyright ideas, nor should one copyright the simplest expression of them. The merger doctrine specifies a narrow subset of knowledge as uncopyrightable [1] -- basic dictionaries, catalogs, laws, manuals, and primers should be free as well. This will be the case within a generation in many parts of the world -- and it will be hard to explain to our children why there used to be twenty different dictionaries and a hundred different language 101 coursebooks for each language, all using the same types of words and vocabulary and images and yet struggling to look as if they were not all using shared source material. SJ [1] see the [[Idea-expression divide]] On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:32 PM, Pavlo Shevelopavlo.shev...@gmail.com wrote: licenses -- data, overviews, and reference-style knowledge should all Would you please explain what do you mean as reference-style knowledge? On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 2:21 AM, Samuel Kleinmeta...@gmail.com wrote: When I say world of WP I mean world post-WP -- the world we live in, in which certain businesses are failing now that basic reliable information and data are available freely... It would be healthy to see compatibly-licensed projects that use different sets of core principles; not just wikinfo (for instance) but also POV specialist reference works. There is an audience for that, and they should also be encouraged to contribute to free knowledge. And if someone can find a way to keep professional encyclopedists from dying out as a breed, that would be good. I don't want to see other reference works go out of business; I do want to see them adopt free licenses -- data, overviews, and reference-style knowledge should all be free. SJ On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Kul Takanao Wadhwakwad...@wikimedia.org wrote: - experienced professional reference-work writers (and we should help them find ways to sustain themselves, particularly in niche markets -- one way is by distributing the underlying work needed to find and organize data). there is room in the world-of-WP for effective, sustainable POV and specialist works SJ - Just curious...where in WP do you think POV and specialist works could fit? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
Lars Aronsson wrote: Henning Schlottmann wrote: Who are our actual users? This is a good question, not only with respect to level (youth or academic), but also for topics (academic subjects like medicine, or popular culture). Retired academics might provide useful input on how to treat cancer, but might be out of touch with trends in manga or cooking. If we discourage teenagers from writing about their favorite artists, they will find Wikipedia less useful. Teenagers know nothing about cooking ... Ask their mothers. ;-) Teenagers writing about popular culture have never bothered me. They may seem to carry on ad nauseum on these topics, but so what? These are great opportunities for them to hone their skills that they will need when their interests drift to the real world. If they make outrageous comments in the articles there will be an entire community of other teens to set them straight. It is also a question of what alternatives to Wikipedia our users have. Even if we fail to produce a good encyclopedia (in many smaller languages, it will take a long time to build something useful), we might succeed in killing all competition, especially printed reference works. This is a problem for Wikipedia as well, as we could be running out of sources to cite. Simply put, we need more forks. If you put a big bet on the longshot in a horse race he ceases to be the longshot without the horse having undergone any improvements. Healthy competition is also a guarantee for NPOV. As much as we advocate for NPOV we can only know that we have achieved it by comparison with other sites.. I have written many short articles based on information found in reference works like who's who from earlier decades. But many such titles are no longer produced, because printed reference works are no longer profitable, especially in smaller markets (smaller languages). The Swedish Vem är det was published every 2nd year, but had a 6 year gap from 2001 to 2007, and I don't know if there will ever be another edition. Swedish is not a major international, but it is still a national language with a high degree of literacy, and a significant corpus of extant material For international languages the problem is a bigger one because the material is so abundant. Some libraries just throw the stuff out because they need the space. If the material has been there for more than a century without anyone having asked to use it it is hardly worth their effort to put essential conservation work on books printed on acidic paper or with corrosive gall-inks. Many printed reference works were financially supported by buyers who thought they were necessary to have, but seldom used them. Today the same people still use reference works very seldom. The difference is they now think (wrongly) that everything is online, and they don't need to buy printed reference works anymore. This is a significant observation. For many of these earlier buyers having long sets of uniformly bound books was a matter of pride; their heirs did not share this pride. The Google Books venture largely adds to the confusion. The real value-added comes from knowing how to use the material, and how to find links between them. This is more than a matter of search functions. Search functions are no substitute for the intuitive process of knowing what to look for. Another traditional must have is the daily newspaper, which many young people are now abandoning, resulting in the current crisis. Revenue from ads on newspaper websites isn't covering the loss of subscription revenue from the printed editions. Traditional newspapers are also losing subscribers because of the high proportion of advertising. Environmentally conscious members of the public see no point to receiving stacks of advertising material that goes immediately into the trash. We could be entering a period of scarcity of good reference information, as counterintuitive as that might seem. There is a huge gap for Wikipedia to fill. Yes, the gap is huge, perhaps too big for Wikipedia alone to fill. The attempts by some who possess the information to make it proprietary does not help. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
Mark Williamson wrote: This is precisely one of the problems that is holding us back. Individual prejudices against younger individuals may have scared younger users away from the project. All in all, I feel that we should basically treat all users the same, regardless of age. If a 15 year old makes good contributions to an article on particle physics but they need a little fixing up, it should be treated the same way as if a 30 year old made the same contribution - fix it. When I first encountered you you showed a great capacity to be a pain in the ass. You shared that ability with a few others who were already well passed their teen years. Your tenacity through all this has been commendable, and your continuing presence has had a mellowing effect on you. At Wikimania-Frankfurt you were one of the two people that I most regretted not having the chance to meet. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
Henning Schlottmann wrote: John Vandenberg wrote: On wikimedia, young people learn how to properly reference an article, which will help them as they progress in their education. Originally Wikipedia was about People, who could already write academic papers and did not need tutoring or learning those abilities on Wikipedia for their future life. When was that ever a requirement? It's about everybody being able to contribute. The kind of elite qualifications that you outline are exactly the kind of things that are the features of the ivory tower that need challenging. Young people have the most to gain from participating, because the skills that they acquire on wikimedia will stay with them, helping them in their many years to come. And what does Wikipedia get from those young people? We don't have the man power to nanny them or teach them academic writing. We all are authors, first and foremost. I'm not going to change the diapers of any promising young people who would like to make their first attempts of focused writing on Wikipedia. Authors, first and foremost is fine. Whining about those who don't meet overblown standards has nothing to do with authorship. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
Samuel Klein wrote: I mean basic educational information about how things work, and how they relate to one another; data and facts; and maps, statistics, and visualizations of this sort of knowledge. I vaguely remember some long-ago comments from Jimbo where he foresaw WP as including practical information. Somehow we drifted away from that into more traditional encyclopedia space by the time we started rejecting recipes for cooking. You cannot copyright ideas, nor should one copyright the simplest expression of them. The merger doctrine specifies a narrow subset of knowledge as uncopyrightable [1] -- basic dictionaries, catalogs, laws, manuals, and primers should be free as well. You and I know that, but it gets quite tiring to argue over and over with pusillanimous copyright paranoiacs and their witless desire to be absolutely safe and right about the laws that they never understood in the first place. This will be the case within a generation in many parts of the world -- and it will be hard to explain to our children why there used to be twenty different dictionaries and a hundred different language 101 coursebooks for each language, all using the same types of words and vocabulary and images and yet struggling to look as if they were not all using shared source material. The problem here is one of how to reach teachers many of which, in their pursuit of fitting square-pegged students into round holes, would be quite happy if they could strap those students into a lathe. Language learning and basic mathematics workbooks are two areas where it should be easiest to develop non-proprietary materials. The one advantage for teachers in the developing world is that they can't afford proprietary material. Teachers, especially those in advanced countries need to seize the power that they already have, but this is counterintuitive when their own years of learning were so rooted in deference to textbooks. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
Ray, I appreciate your honesty. I'll agree with you that I was not a very pleasant presence on the ML. Reading archives from, say, 2005 makes me cringe. I'm glad that people were not as heavy-handed as they could (should?) have been in dealing with me at the time. I learned a great deal about people from this community although I think the bulk of the growing up I've done (so far!) had to be done In Real Life. I did definitely learn some lasting lessons though and I'm sure I wouldn't be who I am today without WM although I'm not so active anymore. Mark skype: node.ue On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Ray Saintongesainto...@telus.net wrote: Mark Williamson wrote: This is precisely one of the problems that is holding us back. Individual prejudices against younger individuals may have scared younger users away from the project. All in all, I feel that we should basically treat all users the same, regardless of age. If a 15 year old makes good contributions to an article on particle physics but they need a little fixing up, it should be treated the same way as if a 30 year old made the same contribution - fix it. When I first encountered you you showed a great capacity to be a pain in the ass. You shared that ability with a few others who were already well passed their teen years. Your tenacity through all this has been commendable, and your continuing presence has had a mellowing effect on you. At Wikimania-Frankfurt you were one of the two people that I most regretted not having the chance to meet. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
Sorry for double-posting but I felt that it was really important to add something. This is a great example of why it is important to keep younger editors around. Promising intelligent young people who are comfortable with and frequent users of Wikipedia now could be leading scientists, artists, and politicians in 10 years and it is in our interests to make sure that they feel at home with us. It's a great long-term investment for us and it could pay off. Mark skype: node.ue On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Mark Williamsonnode...@gmail.com wrote: Ray, I appreciate your honesty. I'll agree with you that I was not a very pleasant presence on the ML. Reading archives from, say, 2005 makes me cringe. I'm glad that people were not as heavy-handed as they could (should?) have been in dealing with me at the time. I learned a great deal about people from this community although I think the bulk of the growing up I've done (so far!) had to be done In Real Life. I did definitely learn some lasting lessons though and I'm sure I wouldn't be who I am today without WM although I'm not so active anymore. Mark skype: node.ue On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Ray Saintongesainto...@telus.net wrote: Mark Williamson wrote: This is precisely one of the problems that is holding us back. Individual prejudices against younger individuals may have scared younger users away from the project. All in all, I feel that we should basically treat all users the same, regardless of age. If a 15 year old makes good contributions to an article on particle physics but they need a little fixing up, it should be treated the same way as if a 30 year old made the same contribution - fix it. When I first encountered you you showed a great capacity to be a pain in the ass. You shared that ability with a few others who were already well passed their teen years. Your tenacity through all this has been commendable, and your continuing presence has had a mellowing effect on you. At Wikimania-Frankfurt you were one of the two people that I most regretted not having the chance to meet. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
