[Foundation-l] Wikidata
It looks like a solution to bug 4547 is on the horizon. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4547 See also [Wikitech-l] Reasonably efficient interwiki transclusion http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/197322 This will be very useful for templates which Commons has developed, especially language related templates, however I am concerned that people are also planning on using Commons as a repo for Wikipedia infoboxes, and including the *data* on Commons rather than just the template code. e.g. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Peter17/GSoc_2010#Interest This centralisation of data makes sense on many levels, however using Commons as the host of this data will result in many edit wars moving to the Commons project, involving people from many languages. Even the infobox structure can be the cause of edit wars. I think it is undesirable to have these Wikipedia problems added to Commons existing problems. ;-) Tying Wikipedia and Commons closer together is also problematic when we consider the differing audience and scope of each project, especially in light of the recent media problems. If the core templates and data used by Wikipedia are hosted/modified on Commons, it will be more difficult to justify why Commons accepts content which isn't appropriate on Wikipedia. A centralised data wiki has been proposed previously, many times: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/historical http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata_%282%29 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiDatabank Non-WMF projects, such as freebase, dbpedia, etc., have been exploring this space. Isn't it time that we started a new project!? ;-) A wikidata project could use semantic mediawiki from the outset, and be seeded with data from dbpedia. A lot of existing proposed projects would benefit from a centralised wikidata project. e.g. a genealogy wiki could use the relationships stored on the wikidata project. wikisource and commons could use the central data wiki for their Author and Creator details. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikidata
I see the highest interest in statistical data that can be automatically updated from official sources. Date: Fri, 28 May 2010 16:51:27 +1000 From: John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikidata To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: peter...@gmail.com, Wikimedia Commons Discussion List common...@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: aanlktikq7kmy4d9hvkb3hia51zrs3hmvlrxumncna...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 It looks like a solution to bug 4547 is on the horizon. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4547 See also [Wikitech-l] Reasonably efficient interwiki transclusion http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/197322 This will be very useful for templates which Commons has developed, especially language related templates, however I am concerned that people are also planning on using Commons as a repo for Wikipedia infoboxes, and including the *data* on Commons rather than just the template code. e.g. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Peter17/GSoc_2010#Interest This centralisation of data makes sense on many levels, however using Commons as the host of this data will result in many edit wars moving to the Commons project, involving people from many languages. Even the infobox structure can be the cause of edit wars. I think it is undesirable to have these Wikipedia problems added to Commons existing problems. ;-) Tying Wikipedia and Commons closer together is also problematic when we consider the differing audience and scope of each project, especially in light of the recent media problems. If the core templates and data used by Wikipedia are hosted/modified on Commons, it will be more difficult to justify why Commons accepts content which isn't appropriate on Wikipedia. A centralised data wiki has been proposed previously, many times: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/historical http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata_%282%29 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiDatabank Non-WMF projects, such as freebase, dbpedia, etc., have been exploring this space. Isn't it time that we started a new project!? ;-) A wikidata project could use semantic mediawiki from the outset, and be seeded with data from dbpedia. A lot of existing proposed projects would benefit from a centralised wikidata project. e.g. a genealogy wiki could use the relationships stored on the wikidata project. wikisource and commons could use the central data wiki for their Author and Creator details. -- John Vandenberg * ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Participation of intellectual professions
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 The premises: 1. I just had a short chat with [[Erik Orsenna]], a member of the [[Académie française]] who loves to learn and pass along knowledge. He's also interested in the adventure of knowledge and in the democratic processes and appreciate being able to tap into the knowledge of the five french Académies he has access to. I asked him if he was aware of Wikipedia and of its participative nature. He did. I asked him why the Academicians didn't participate more and share their knowledge on it. He said that they have no time, that they're busy writing their books. 2. In parallel, I had several conversations with university Professors showing their reticence, distrust or hostility about the free encyclopedia. They discredit the articles when speaking to their students. 3. High level physicists also stay away from it. (for example most of the theoretical information about [[quasars]] comes from the 1960's. Current information on the net is frequently only available through pay-to-read sites.) The interpretation: It seems that the traditional way of handling knowledge is treating it as a good, that is, a resource with a monetary value and ownership. One invests money, time and efforts to obtain it. People who made a career out of it want to recover their costs and make benefits out of it. Some like the prestige of their exclusive knowledge or the authority it confers. The consequences: A. Some feel threatened by the wikipedia model. They don't want it to succeed. They perceive it would question their role, their power and their way of earning money. B. An expert who has synthesized after 40 years of dedicated studies most of the knowledge of his specific domain that is known to humanity will transmit it to a few persons only each year: a few dozens of students, a few dozens of other experts, and a few thousands of passionate readers who buy the vulgarization book. Thus, knowledge is controlled, reserved, limited, slowed down. It will take decades or centuries before the best of what we know reach everybody. The consequences if it were to change: With wikipedia, any expert could reach and teach millions of persons. In ten or twenty years, every literate person with internet access could use an interdisciplinary, edge-cutting database of knowledge for their diary reasoning. The knowledge and understanding of mankind could make giant leaps. Concluding: I think it is important to think how many of the intellectual profession don't collaborate and why. We should search if mechanisms involving the wikipedia and that would benefit their research are possible. We should even think economical models about knowledge that allow the profession to change, in the same way that it is happening with the free software, copyleft, Creative Commons and other alternative models. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMACAaAAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6L47gH/ArEE/5fhrr47KwQ4FtkuBFh jQyjpM3QUIA5ewEsUBKTCH9GmfWGjsZFCai6At+0FZe8nvxBNZ4PU2/citTzZ1Yi g6e1K3+GN8hnIjPcoW5yg2Eo/znuUyJNoE7rJ0zZLHcs5QNBZbosua0XDdhQ98ji 6Hi9MJkbpIcg8J+Ut/lYZCBGSvD0s64s9Rsi51cVgMF3pitkP1j0h017qnA71d8g 6U7OQf8dtsstDaT0UsrdS9l4b1TrNWW2SUatGBruSemrdUScnpojbsqM9yvP9NSe q7zhKf5xPYvdvaa6DxfkKaijjslkxj9sg8efhjsqRyt13alFBF7YSR9aHO8GEz0= =/yTW -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wikidata
Hello. I've just joined the list, as soon as I've known about the Wikidata subject. I've been thinking about a Wikidata project even before I knew about the ideas proposed at Meta. I've explained it to several people in Spanish wikipedia, and there I've begun work on Wikidata-compliant population data templates, which are also found in en.wiki and de.wiki. Obviously Wikidata seems almost a must for me, not only for providing up-to-date data once for all the wikis, but also for providing global solutions to show it (graphics, tables...), and many other ideas. But the proposals at Meta don't seem to advance, and the Wikidata mailing list (!) is inactive from 2007. Recently I asked in IRC, and Gerard talked to me about Omegawiki; currently used for dictionaries, but could possibly expand to Wikidata. On the other hand, the global templates or Commons-like solution for Wikidata would need no extra interface as Omegawiki does (so, faster implementation and adaptation) and there could be useful global templates not related to data. But that wouldn't be a real database to interact with (from Toolserver, for example). Anyway, it seems clear to me that Wikidata is necessary, and that it should be an independent Wikimedia project, whichever the way it is implemented. I hope it can be pushed from here, and I'm ready to help with the work when appropiate. Looking forward to more ideas... José Emilio Mori Recio, -jem- in the projects ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Participation of intellectual professions
With wikipedia, any expert could reach and teach millions of persons. In ten or twenty years, every literate person with internet access could use an interdisciplinary, edge-cutting database of knowledge for their diary reasoning. The knowledge and understanding of mankind could make giant leaps. Yes, this is what we are up to, with or without help from experts. Fred ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Renaming Flagged Protections to Pending Changes
Hi everyone, After much debate, we've settled on a name for the English Wikipedia implementation of FlaggedRevs: Pending Changes. This is a slight variation on one of the finalists (Pending Revisions) which has the benefit of using the less jargony term changes instead of revisions. The MediaWiki extension will continue to be named FlaggedRevs, but the greatly simplified subset of functionality that editors and readers on en.wikipedia.org will see will be referred to as Pending Changes in the user interface, help documentation, and other places that we'll talk about this feature for non-developers working on English Wikipedia. Thanks everyone for weighing in! We'll be updating the message strings on flaggedrevs.labs to reflect the new name: http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Message_updates Rob On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Rob Lanphier ro...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi everyone, It looks like the discussion on the name is dying down, so I'd like to summarize what I think we've heard here: 1. There's no clear favorite out there. In addition to the two ideas we put forward (Pending Revisions and Double Check), there's been quite a bit of discussion around alternatives, for example: Revision Review and Pending Edits. 2. There's are still some that aren't comfortable changing the name away from Flagged Protection, but that doesn't appear to be a widely held view. 3. Some people like Double Check, but some people dislike it a lot. The people who like it seem to be comfortable with the colloquial use of it, whereas the people that dislike it don't like the lack of precision and the possible confusion created by the use of the word double. 4. Pending Revisions seems to be something most people would settle for. It's probably not the hands down favorite of too many people, but it doesn't seem to provoke the same dislike that Double Check does. 5. Pending Edits is a simplification of Pending Revisions that seems to have some support, as it replaces the jargony Revision with the easier Edits 6. Hyperion Frobnosticating Endoswitch seems to have gathered a cult following. Yes, we have a sense of humor. No, we're not going there. :-) A little background as to where we're at. Double Check had an enthusiastic following at the WMF office, but we're not inclined to push that one if it's going to be a fight (it's far from the unanimous choice at WMF anyway). Revision Review seems to be heading a bit too far into jargon land for our comfort. Pending Revisions is the compromise that seems to stand up to scrutiny. A variation such as Pending Edits or Pending Changes also seems acceptable to us. That's where we stand now. If you haven't spoken up yet, now is the time, since we're only a couple of days from making a final decision on this. Please weigh in here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Terminology Thanks Rob ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Participation of intellectual professions
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 28/05/2010 22:42, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: 3. High level physicists also stay away from it. (for example most of the theoretical information about [[quasars]] comes from the 1960's. Current information on the net is frequently only available through pay-to-read sites.) Well, I am a university professor in physics and a Wikipedia administrator. There's a misunderstanding. Not surprising because I'm terrible with words. I'm glad you're here and I'm sure there are a lot like you. I'm expressing my surprise that there are so many reticences among the intellectual professions, at least in France and Argentina where I made my little personal investigation. I would naively expect a massive participation from them, on the supposition that they share a vocation for sharing knowledge and a passion to learn from others. And indeed some do. I have the impression, however, that they're a minority. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If it needs to be precised, I try to never communicate to impose personal convictions but to ask questions and provoke thoughts in the hope of deeper questions. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMAE6/AAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LszIIAJJ8upZ219OBGr3w6wbpp6CT 1SnTMVszCB7rEp0961AwM1oDgiNed/QTNtk5+nH8rtT4FXlMvGDA6Abx8CttQYlS ygDeRiHm2r6O0CsHWR6QrS+gKD3G4JkrdUUrSgFE0ZNyflpwUW0KB9Zhl/2gOXjY DrcCiTAdA8qAX/f4OabDJi9TE8NAR0yzuti196Z0k9rAQmbEAvX/UDjxJ7Cvr3Nu 8IVJ0LxG84tLwPDQ3iWE5E2N9S51uJiUrEK0qiKhp5KgD7T89ABKcz/JYpV5YKfV HJxe9QvPDIYbB5dcr66nYrfAbIq95fnMcITkJOuLEtfqeYffQFXZBTZYR4CA9Eg= =u1X4 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Participation of intellectual professions
The traditional academic system is based upon status differences between pupils and teachers. One of the problems is the reception they get--a great many experts do not take it kindly when they are challenged by the ignorant, and get no respect for their qualifications, or even negative comments about them. But there is no way of keeping WP open and preventing them from being subjected to this. It affects not just academic experts, but experts in all sorts of fields and knowledgeable amateurs also. Some experts can deal with it well, and a few have been known to go for years on WP without mentioning their academic status. Some have the art of explaining things to make them clear to anyone who is not willfully misunderstanding, and the patience to do it. These are the kind of people we need. Alas, the one's who cannot tolerate the fools are probably never going to be able to work effectively in a WP environment. On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 7:16 PM, Noein prono...@gmail.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 28/05/2010 22:42, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: 3. High level physicists also stay away from it. (for example most of the theoretical information about [[quasars]] comes from the 1960's. Current information on the net is frequently only available through pay-to-read sites.) Well, I am a university professor in physics and a Wikipedia administrator. There's a misunderstanding. Not surprising because I'm terrible with words. I'm glad you're here and I'm sure there are a lot like you. I'm expressing my surprise that there are so many reticences among the intellectual professions, at least in France and Argentina where I made my little personal investigation. I would naively expect a massive participation from them, on the supposition that they share a vocation for sharing knowledge and a passion to learn from others. And indeed some do. I have the impression, however, that they're a minority. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If it needs to be precised, I try to never communicate to impose personal convictions but to ask questions and provoke thoughts in the hope of deeper questions. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMAE6/AAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LszIIAJJ8upZ219OBGr3w6wbpp6CT 1SnTMVszCB7rEp0961AwM1oDgiNed/QTNtk5+nH8rtT4FXlMvGDA6Abx8CttQYlS ygDeRiHm2r6O0CsHWR6QrS+gKD3G4JkrdUUrSgFE0ZNyflpwUW0KB9Zhl/2gOXjY DrcCiTAdA8qAX/f4OabDJi9TE8NAR0yzuti196Z0k9rAQmbEAvX/UDjxJ7Cvr3Nu 8IVJ0LxG84tLwPDQ3iWE5E2N9S51uJiUrEK0qiKhp5KgD7T89ABKcz/JYpV5YKfV HJxe9QvPDIYbB5dcr66nYrfAbIq95fnMcITkJOuLEtfqeYffQFXZBTZYR4CA9Eg= =u1X4 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Participation of intellectual professions
Exactly what David said. -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 74, Issue 129
Re: Participation of intellectual professions I see a number of issues holding professionals back from contributing: 1) Some do not realize that it is possible to edit Wikipedia ( I hear this at work when people ask me how I became an editor ). Maybe we should advertise the fact that yes you too can edit Wikipedia. 2) Many are just not interested. In medicine we have had issues with getting physicians to do continuing medical education. Many just want to do their job and that is it. Contributing to Wikipedia is work. However students are required to do work and I think this is one of the populations which would be easiest to attract. McGill University may have started a Wikipedia club. Promoting these may be useful. 3) A great deal of competition to Wikipedia has sprung up such as Radiopeadia ( which does not allow commercial use of images ), Medpedia ( which only allow professionals to contribute ), and Wikidocs ( which has more technical content ). Each addressing some perceived drawback in Wikipedia. None however has received the viewership of Wikipedia but of course cuts into the pool of available volunteers. Medpedia has partnered with a number of very respected Universities. I think we could learn something for each of these formats such as clarification around image copyright and that CC does not mean you lose the rights to it, greater exposure of the professionals who already contribute, etc. 4) Wikipedia has received negative press in professional publications. We need to address these negativities most of which are false. Currently a number of us at WikiProject Med are writing a paper for publication promoting Wikipedia as a health care information resource. Other subject areas should do the same. BTW do we have a WikiProject to address the issue of recruiting editors? I now we have the usability project. James Heilman ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Participation of intellectual professions
On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 12:21 AM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.comwrote: Exactly what David said. -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan Aye, there is a group who will never really be able to fit in (I generally think of them as the elitist side of the academics but that isn't really the best way to describe them I think). I do think that there are a lot who aren't really engaged who could be brought in though. Other then the elitism group I think most of the other problems they have can at some level be overcome by showing them the opportunities and benefits. The Public Policy Initiative that the Foundation is starting sounds like a great idea to get some thoughts on how to do this (both helping to incorporate the grad and undergrad students but also the profs by showing them exactly how much it can do). In the end however we are going to have to be able to expand it to other disciplines and find good ways for us to do it on a larger (and more volunteer run) scale. There was an interesting point that I saw a couple weeks ago (I think it was in the Initiatives State 1 report, perhaps it was just in the description on OutreachWiki). Basically it was talking about who had the most time to edit. Undergrads had the most, Grads and Professors tended to be more focused on academic papers/books for work reasons and then the Retired Professors had more time again. I think we could still get a fair amount of Grad students and active Professors but the Retired/Emeritus Professors would be another good group to try and target (and one I believe that will be less focused on by the current Initiative) I know we have some, but there are tons more out there ;). James Alexander james.alexan...@rochester.edu jameso...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
