Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Amir E. Aharoni]

בתאריך יום ג׳, 1 בינו׳ 2019, 07:37, מאת Paulo Santos Perneta <
paulospern...@gmail.com>:

> Ahh, it would really be a fantastic improvement if we could get rid of all
> that template & category clutter from the articles.

[...]

Let me tell a little
> story: Some months ago I was in a workshop with a group of librarians, and
> they were creating articles using VE. At some point all of them came under
> a barrage of fire from resident wikipedians, bombing them with warnings
> saying "you MUST add categories"


I spent my first year or so on Wikipedia, editing and creating quite a lot
without understanding how categories work. Those were the days... Other
people, to who I'm deeply thankful, quietly fixed them after me. I later
learned how to work with them myself. If my edits were deleted because I
did not add categories, I'd possibly be away from this project.


and pointing them to the oldfashioned
> instructions on how to add them on wikicode, totally useless for newbies
> using VE.


This is another symptom: many of the help pages are hopelessly out of date.
And the main reason for this is that they are too localized: they were
initially created before we had better (but still not perfect) tools for
global pages and translation. Now the veterans think they're good even
though they rarely need them, and the newbies are just puzzled by them, and
for the developers of new features it's too hard to manage help pages that
are so dispersed across wikis and languages.

It was the first time I was using VE myself in a more intensive
> way, and while all of we were hastily trying to find where the heck
> categories were hidden in VE,


So here are a couple of things that you can do, and please tell everyone
else to do them: use the VE more! It will very frequently save you time,
and it will help you understand newbies better.

If it's not good enough for you to use more, report bugs! The only ways to
find bugs are to use it more yourself and to carefully observe other people
using it (see
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2017-02-06/Op-ed
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6sS0M9TpYQ=27m28s ; note that the
relevant part of the video begins at 27:28).

And every time a newbie asks you how to do something, check whether the
relevant help page in your wiki documents how to do it in VE, and if it
doesn't, take a few minutes to add the info.

None of these things will by themselves make a big strategic difference,
but it will make the work smoother for a lot of people, at least in the
short term.

the librarians kept asking, puzzled - what
> are those categories that seem to be of such a crucial importance to
> wikipedians?


Well, categories should actually be fairly easy for librarians to
understand. If these librarians had a hard time with them, it doesn't mean
that they are stupid, but that our categories system is badly broken.


The sad fact is that 99% of those people that send those
> useless warnings have not the least idea what categories are for, they
> simply notice they are missing in a newly created article, and as they know
> they are not supposed to be missing because they have been warned
> themselves, they mimic the behavior perpetually


Yes! Don't tolerate the perpetual mimicking of very old practices. Speak up
and change stuff.

Wikipedia should be a big club of people who like sharing knowledge, and
not a small club of people who managed to learn wiki syntax.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Amir E. Aharoni]

בתאריך יום א׳, 30 בדצמ׳ 2018, 15:55, מאת Yaroslav Blanter :

>
>
> Re main point: People, let us be serious. We missed mobile editing (well,
> at least this has been identified as a problem, and something is being done
> about it). We missed voice interfaces. We are now missing neural networks.
> We should have been discussing by now what neural networks are allowed to
> do in the projects and what they are not allowed to do. And instead we are
> discussing (and edit-warring) whether the Crimean bridge is the longest in
> Europe or not because different sources place the border between Europe and
> Asia differently, and, according to some sources, the bridge is not in
> Europe. Why do you think that if we keep missing all technological
> development relevant in the field we are still going to survive?
>

False dichotomy.

Wide participation in big strategic discussion is a Good Thing, but it
doesn't mean that it's the only thing all the Wikimedians should be talking
about. There are people who are less interested in strategic discussions
and more interested in on-wiki fact-checking. Wikipedia editors' obsession
for fact-checking is its strength—our strength. It's sometimes frustrating
because it can go into silly technicalities or political ax-grinding, but
for the most part it's the main thing that keeps Wikipedia relevant,
trustworthy, and popular.

How can these fact-checking practices be harmonized with current technology
and media culture is the right question to ask. If the people who often do
this can *also* occasionally participate in strategic development
discussions, there's a chance it will be answered. Invite them.

Happy public domain day and happy new year! :)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

Ahh, it would really be a fantastic improvement if we could get rid of all
that template & category clutter from the articles.

Wikipedia categories are generally anathema to newbies, more like some
weird and absurd core they have to do in order to have their article
accepted. Even to me, who have been there for almost 10 years, Wikipedia
categories have little use (and I actually came to develop a crescent
hatred for them, due to the mess they have been causing in Wikidata, due to
the inappropriate linking to Commons categories). Let me tell a little
story: Some months ago I was in a workshop with a group of librarians, and
they were creating articles using VE. At some point all of them came under
a barrage of fire from resident wikipedians, bombing them with warnings
saying "you MUST add categories" and pointing them to the oldfashioned
instructions on how to add them on wikicode, totally useless for newbies
using VE. It was the first time I was using VE myself in a more intensive
way, and while all of we were hastily trying to find where the heck
categories were hidden in VE, the librarians kept asking, puzzled - what
are those categories that seem to be of such a crucial importance to
wikipedians? The sad fact is that 99% of those people that send those
useless warnings have not the least idea what categories are for, they
simply notice they are missing in a newly created article, and as they know
they are not supposed to be missing because they have been warned
themselves, they mimic the behavior perpetually, not even stopping to think
how useless and outdated they came to be, how hard it is for a newbie to
understand they exist at all, let alone what they are for, and that
throwing warnings designed in 2006 and never changed since then at newbies
is absolutely useless and only serves to confuse and annoy them, and make
them feel unwelcome in the project.

I really wish there was a better solution for what categories still do in
Wikipedia, so that they could be abolished for good. That would certainly
be an improvement in usability.

Paulo

Amir E. Aharoni  escreveu no dia segunda,
31/12/2018 à(s) 19:56:

> ‫בתאריך יום ב׳, 31 בדצמ׳ 2018 ב-10:14 מאת ‪Peter Southwood‬‏ <‪
> peter.southw...@telkomsa.net‬‏>:‬
>
> Does the technology exist? Is it available?
> How does this splitting make maintenance easier?
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
>
> Not exactly, but it's doable and it's desirable.
>
> There are two relatively recently developed components in MediaWiki that
> are important for developers: Content Model and Multi-Content Revisions.
> They are not discussed very much among the less technical editors because
> they are pretty internal, and I'm really not an expert on what they do
> myself, but as far as I understand them, they can serve as steps to
> implementing Jane's suggestion.
>
> This suggestion is not even very new. In a way, the extremely old bug
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T2167 , originally filed in 2004 (!)
> suggests pretty much the same thing: separate interlanguage links and other
> metadata from the page content. Interlanguage links were mostly separated
> from pages thanks to Wikidata, but categories still aren't, and a lot of
> other kinds of metadata appeared since then: DEFAULTSORT, newsectionlink,
> notoc, and many others. Authority control, navbox, and infobox templates,
> as well as links to disambiguation pages, can probably be converted to
> separately-stored metadata as well.
>
> Wikidata can probably play a major role in getting this done, but it's not
> the only factor, and a lot of development is needed to better integrate
> Wikidata with other projects.
>
> But yes—I generally agree with Jane that better modularization of wiki
> pages' content components can go a long to making them easier to edit,
> easier to search, easier to query, etc. It's not the only major change that
> our technical infrastructure needs, but it's among the more important ones.
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ‪“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
>
>
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> > Behalf Of Jane Darnell
> > Sent: 30 December 2018 15:42
> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
> >
> > Well it is not difficult to imagine when you consider for example line
> > items in the case of list articles. Many lists could be split into such
> > line items and kept in a static assembled form by some sort of "assembly
> > template". Many of these line items are either articles or parts of
> > articles. Such "line items" may or may not have Wikidata items, may or
> may
> > not be suitable for Wikidata items, and may or may not be able to be
> > structured in any way, shape or form than the one they currently have. I
> > would like to be able to address these "line items" as "findable editing
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Kiril Simeonovski]

Hi Sj,

The project documentation can be found on Meta and the story was also
featured in the GLAM newsletter twice.

The idea about dedicated environment either as a separate wiki or as part
of the incubator for testing novelties is sound, and it would be
interesting to see how that will work in support of their ultimate
implementation.

Best,
Kiril


On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 01:51 Samuel Klein  wrote:

> Dear Kiril, I assume you mean these lovely experiments by Shared Knowledge:
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Videos_from_the_Republic_of_Macedonia
>
> They are lovely, and look like they are now in use.  I like specific
> examples like these; was there any description of the project afterwards
> covering its welcome, the steps towards its inclusion, notes for future
> research groups tackling similar projects in the future?
>
> Kiril writes:
> > The problem is that a general community consensus can not be easily
> bypassed
> > even when the novelty is an obvious improvement and the changes usually
> get
> > rejected as good-faith attempts.
>
> A dedicated Draft-Wiki, like [test] but for text and media, with much
> simpler standards for structure, sourcing, and metadata [perhaps combined
> w/ incubator?]  would be a simple and welcome solution.  It would help not
> only small media projects but also massive uploads from existing archives
> and GLAMs take their first steps without overly complicating things.  I
> think this is one of the most valuable simple additions we could make.
>
> There is also a more general solution already available: to create a new
> tool that participants in a new initiative use (which only later gets
> integrated fully into the standard workflow on various projects).  But that
> takes a bit of technical preparation each time.
>
> Amir writes:
> >   There are two relatively recently developed components in MediaWiki
> that
> >   are important for developers: Content Model and Multi-Content
> Revisions.
> >   They are not discussed very much among the less technical editors
> because
> >   they are pretty internal, and I'm really not an expert on what they do
> >   myself, but as far as I understand them, they can serve as steps to
> >   implementing Jane's suggestion.
>
> Yes!  and thanks for bringing up T2167 -- that and adding a simple
> mechanism for federating such data (so that every owner of a lowly
> small-scale mediawiki instance can add to or revise metadata namespaces)
> feel more like a basic expansion of wiki-nature --- with associated
> expansion of the kinds and magnitude of knowledge included in our projects
> -- than like just another set of features.
>
> Warmly + medialogically, SJ
>
> On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 2:18 PM Kiril Simeonovski <
> kiril.simeonov...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > P.S. I can give you a very nice example of this happening in practice
> from
> > my personal experience. Few years ago, we produced high-quality videos
> > documenting physics and chemistry experiments that had to be added to
> > related articles. The project was welcomed by some chapters, mostly
> > despised by the Wikimedia Foundation, while the communities appeared to
> be
> > not ready for the introduction of such videos with only some users on
> > Wikimedia Commons showing some interest and sharing their thoughts.
> >
> > The main problem seems to be the lack of coordination between various
> > stakeholders inside the movement on technology-related questions that are
> > strategically important for the future of Wikipedia.
> >
> > Best,
> > Kiril
> >
> > On Mon 31. Dec 2018 at 19:59, Kiril Simeonovski <
> > kiril.simeonov...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Paulo,
> > >
> > > I agree that more or less we know what activities are intended for new
> > and
> > > what for experienced users. The challenging part is to make a sensible
> > > decision on whether to reach out to new users using the visual editor
> and
> > > the translation tool or to continue with the old-fashioned code editor.
> > > There are multiple pros and cons of either decision but it is
> reasonable
> > to
> > > believe that these tools were developed for some specific purpose. This
> > > will gain even more weight once the mobile editing gets improved.
> > >
> > > Other examples soliciting important decisions are whether and how to
> > allow
> > > new users to use videos across articles or how to shape an article's
> > > structure that differs from the standard one. In many cases, people
> that
> > we
> > > reach out to are smart in pinpointing Wikipedia's weaknesses and are
> > eager
> > > to propose innovative solutions that primarily aim at making the
> articles
> > > reader-friendlier. The problem is that a general community consensus
> can
> > > not be easily bypassed even when the novelty is an obvious improvement
> > and
> > > the changes usually get rejected as good-faith attempts.
> >
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[James Heilman]

With respect to complexity of language, we have some data in publication,
looking at the the leads of English medical articles over time. Good news
is that they have improved over the last 10 years from a reading level of
close to "grade 16" to just under "grade 13". This has been a concerted
effort by a small group of us since 2014 and I believe has helped approach
our goal of writing for a general audience rather than a specialist one.

Happy holidays to those getting time off :-)
James

On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 5:51 PM Samuel Klein  wrote:

> Dear Kiril, I assume you mean these lovely experiments by Shared Knowledge:
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Videos_from_the_Republic_of_Macedonia
>
> They are lovely, and look like they are now in use.  I like specific
> examples like these; was there any description of the project afterwards
> covering its welcome, the steps towards its inclusion, notes for future
> research groups tackling similar projects in the future?
>
> Kiril writes:
> > The problem is that a general community consensus can not be easily
> bypassed
> > even when the novelty is an obvious improvement and the changes usually
> get
> > rejected as good-faith attempts.
>
> A dedicated Draft-Wiki, like [test] but for text and media, with much
> simpler standards for structure, sourcing, and metadata [perhaps combined
> w/ incubator?]  would be a simple and welcome solution.  It would help not
> only small media projects but also massive uploads from existing archives
> and GLAMs take their first steps without overly complicating things.  I
> think this is one of the most valuable simple additions we could make.
>
> There is also a more general solution already available: to create a new
> tool that participants in a new initiative use (which only later gets
> integrated fully into the standard workflow on various projects).  But that
> takes a bit of technical preparation each time.
>
> Amir writes:
> >   There are two relatively recently developed components in MediaWiki
> that
> >   are important for developers: Content Model and Multi-Content
> Revisions.
> >   They are not discussed very much among the less technical editors
> because
> >   they are pretty internal, and I'm really not an expert on what they do
> >   myself, but as far as I understand them, they can serve as steps to
> >   implementing Jane's suggestion.
>
> Yes!  and thanks for bringing up T2167 -- that and adding a simple
> mechanism for federating such data (so that every owner of a lowly
> small-scale mediawiki instance can add to or revise metadata namespaces)
> feel more like a basic expansion of wiki-nature --- with associated
> expansion of the kinds and magnitude of knowledge included in our projects
> -- than like just another set of features.
>
> Warmly + medialogically, SJ
>
> On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 2:18 PM Kiril Simeonovski <
> kiril.simeonov...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > P.S. I can give you a very nice example of this happening in practice
> from
> > my personal experience. Few years ago, we produced high-quality videos
> > documenting physics and chemistry experiments that had to be added to
> > related articles. The project was welcomed by some chapters, mostly
> > despised by the Wikimedia Foundation, while the communities appeared to
> be
> > not ready for the introduction of such videos with only some users on
> > Wikimedia Commons showing some interest and sharing their thoughts.
> >
> > The main problem seems to be the lack of coordination between various
> > stakeholders inside the movement on technology-related questions that are
> > strategically important for the future of Wikipedia.
> >
> > Best,
> > Kiril
> >
> > On Mon 31. Dec 2018 at 19:59, Kiril Simeonovski <
> > kiril.simeonov...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Paulo,
> > >
> > > I agree that more or less we know what activities are intended for new
> > and
> > > what for experienced users. The challenging part is to make a sensible
> > > decision on whether to reach out to new users using the visual editor
> and
> > > the translation tool or to continue with the old-fashioned code editor.
> > > There are multiple pros and cons of either decision but it is
> reasonable
> > to
> > > believe that these tools were developed for some specific purpose. This
> > > will gain even more weight once the mobile editing gets improved.
> > >
> > > Other examples soliciting important decisions are whether and how to
> > allow
> > > new users to use videos across articles or how to shape an article's
> > > structure that differs from the standard one. In many cases, people
> that
> > we
> > > reach out to are smart in pinpointing Wikipedia's weaknesses and are
> > eager
> > > to propose innovative solutions that primarily aim at making the
> articles
> > > reader-friendlier. The problem is that a general community consensus
> can
> > > not be easily bypassed even when the novelty is an obvious improvement
> > and
> > > the changes usually get 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Samuel Klein]

Dear Kiril, I assume you mean these lovely experiments by Shared Knowledge:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Videos_from_the_Republic_of_Macedonia

They are lovely, and look like they are now in use.  I like specific
examples like these; was there any description of the project afterwards
covering its welcome, the steps towards its inclusion, notes for future
research groups tackling similar projects in the future?

Kiril writes:
> The problem is that a general community consensus can not be easily
bypassed
> even when the novelty is an obvious improvement and the changes usually
get
> rejected as good-faith attempts.

A dedicated Draft-Wiki, like [test] but for text and media, with much
simpler standards for structure, sourcing, and metadata [perhaps combined
w/ incubator?]  would be a simple and welcome solution.  It would help not
only small media projects but also massive uploads from existing archives
and GLAMs take their first steps without overly complicating things.  I
think this is one of the most valuable simple additions we could make.

There is also a more general solution already available: to create a new
tool that participants in a new initiative use (which only later gets
integrated fully into the standard workflow on various projects).  But that
takes a bit of technical preparation each time.

Amir writes:
>   There are two relatively recently developed components in MediaWiki that
>   are important for developers: Content Model and Multi-Content Revisions.
>   They are not discussed very much among the less technical editors
because
>   they are pretty internal, and I'm really not an expert on what they do
>   myself, but as far as I understand them, they can serve as steps to
>   implementing Jane's suggestion.

Yes!  and thanks for bringing up T2167 -- that and adding a simple
mechanism for federating such data (so that every owner of a lowly
small-scale mediawiki instance can add to or revise metadata namespaces)
feel more like a basic expansion of wiki-nature --- with associated
expansion of the kinds and magnitude of knowledge included in our projects
-- than like just another set of features.

Warmly + medialogically, SJ

On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 2:18 PM Kiril Simeonovski <
kiril.simeonov...@gmail.com> wrote:

> P.S. I can give you a very nice example of this happening in practice from
> my personal experience. Few years ago, we produced high-quality videos
> documenting physics and chemistry experiments that had to be added to
> related articles. The project was welcomed by some chapters, mostly
> despised by the Wikimedia Foundation, while the communities appeared to be
> not ready for the introduction of such videos with only some users on
> Wikimedia Commons showing some interest and sharing their thoughts.
>
> The main problem seems to be the lack of coordination between various
> stakeholders inside the movement on technology-related questions that are
> strategically important for the future of Wikipedia.
>
> Best,
> Kiril
>
> On Mon 31. Dec 2018 at 19:59, Kiril Simeonovski <
> kiril.simeonov...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Paulo,
> >
> > I agree that more or less we know what activities are intended for new
> and
> > what for experienced users. The challenging part is to make a sensible
> > decision on whether to reach out to new users using the visual editor and
> > the translation tool or to continue with the old-fashioned code editor.
> > There are multiple pros and cons of either decision but it is reasonable
> to
> > believe that these tools were developed for some specific purpose. This
> > will gain even more weight once the mobile editing gets improved.
> >
> > Other examples soliciting important decisions are whether and how to
> allow
> > new users to use videos across articles or how to shape an article's
> > structure that differs from the standard one. In many cases, people that
> we
> > reach out to are smart in pinpointing Wikipedia's weaknesses and are
> eager
> > to propose innovative solutions that primarily aim at making the articles
> > reader-friendlier. The problem is that a general community consensus can
> > not be easily bypassed even when the novelty is an obvious improvement
> and
> > the changes usually get rejected as good-faith attempts.
>
___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Amir E. Aharoni]

‫בתאריך יום ב׳, 31 בדצמ׳ 2018 ב-10:14 מאת ‪Peter Southwood‬‏ <‪
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net‬‏>:‬

Does the technology exist? Is it available?
How does this splitting make maintenance easier?
Cheers,
Peter


Not exactly, but it's doable and it's desirable.

There are two relatively recently developed components in MediaWiki that
are important for developers: Content Model and Multi-Content Revisions.
They are not discussed very much among the less technical editors because
they are pretty internal, and I'm really not an expert on what they do
myself, but as far as I understand them, they can serve as steps to
implementing Jane's suggestion.

This suggestion is not even very new. In a way, the extremely old bug
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T2167 , originally filed in 2004 (!)
suggests pretty much the same thing: separate interlanguage links and other
metadata from the page content. Interlanguage links were mostly separated
from pages thanks to Wikidata, but categories still aren't, and a lot of
other kinds of metadata appeared since then: DEFAULTSORT, newsectionlink,
notoc, and many others. Authority control, navbox, and infobox templates,
as well as links to disambiguation pages, can probably be converted to
separately-stored metadata as well.

Wikidata can probably play a major role in getting this done, but it's not
the only factor, and a lot of development is needed to better integrate
Wikidata with other projects.

But yes—I generally agree with Jane that better modularization of wiki
pages' content components can go a long to making them easier to edit,
easier to search, easier to query, etc. It's not the only major change that
our technical infrastructure needs, but it's among the more important ones.

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


>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Jane Darnell
> Sent: 30 December 2018 15:42
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
>
> Well it is not difficult to imagine when you consider for example line
> items in the case of list articles. Many lists could be split into such
> line items and kept in a static assembled form by some sort of "assembly
> template". Many of these line items are either articles or parts of
> articles. Such "line items" may or may not have Wikidata items, may or may
> not be suitable for Wikidata items, and may or may not be able to be
> structured in any way, shape or form than the one they currently have. I
> would like to be able to address these "line items" as "findable editing
> snippets" in the wikiverse, possibly curatable by voice activation,
> reversing the way we can sometimes get them read to us by Siri/Lexa.
>
> On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 1:48 PM Peter Southwood <
> peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
>
> > Jane,
> > I do not understand what parts you would split these things into, or how
> > they would make Wikipedia easier to curate and edit. Could you link to an
> > explanation or clarify the concept?
> > Cheers,
> > Peter
> >
> >
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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>
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>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Kiril Simeonovski]

P.S. I can give you a very nice example of this happening in practice from
my personal experience. Few years ago, we produced high-quality videos
documenting physics and chemistry experiments that had to be added to
related articles. The project was welcomed by some chapters, mostly
despised by the Wikimedia Foundation, while the communities appeared to be
not ready for the introduction of such videos with only some users on
Wikimedia Commons showing some interest and sharing their thoughts.

The main problem seems to be the lack of coordination between various
stakeholders inside the movement on technology-related questions that are
strategically important for the future of Wikipedia.

Best,
Kiril

On Mon 31. Dec 2018 at 19:59, Kiril Simeonovski 
wrote:

> Hi Paulo,
>
> I agree that more or less we know what activities are intended for new and
> what for experienced users. The challenging part is to make a sensible
> decision on whether to reach out to new users using the visual editor and
> the translation tool or to continue with the old-fashioned code editor.
> There are multiple pros and cons of either decision but it is reasonable to
> believe that these tools were developed for some specific purpose. This
> will gain even more weight once the mobile editing gets improved.
>
> Other examples soliciting important decisions are whether and how to allow
> new users to use videos across articles or how to shape an article's
> structure that differs from the standard one. In many cases, people that we
> reach out to are smart in pinpointing Wikipedia's weaknesses and are eager
> to propose innovative solutions that primarily aim at making the articles
> reader-friendlier. The problem is that a general community consensus can
> not be easily bypassed even when the novelty is an obvious improvement and
> the changes usually get rejected as good-faith attempts.
>
> Best,
> Kiril
>
> On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 19:09 Paulo Santos Perneta <
> paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Kiril Simeonovski  escreveu no dia segunda,
>> 31/12/2018 à(s) 10:05:
>>
>>
>>
>> > some innovations. The problem with expanding an unchanged and obsolete
>> > infrastructure to underrepresented groups might result to no avail and
>> > further incentivise a major shift, thus doubling the cost invested in
>> > infrastructure. Definitely, it is an open topic to discuss whether
>> outreach
>> > to new communities should be done using the old methods or experimenting
>> > with something new.
>> >
>>
>> I've been experimenting this personally for some time, firstly with the
>> Art+Feminism initiative, which past experience has shown to be highly
>> counterproductive if handled in a simple, amateurish way - events have
>> been
>> organized here in Portugal without appropriate support, which resulted in
>> massive eliminations of the articles created, with a consequent
>> traumatizing experience for the people that took part in them, that never
>> again wanted to hear about Wikipedia. The 1lib1ref in its basic form also
>> do not seem to be ideal to catch the attention of librarians over here,
>> but
>> alternative ways of organizing it seem to result. Edithatons in general
>> have shown to be a bad option for reaching to new editors, except in the
>> cases where we have some motivated work force already available (feminist
>> activists, students being evaluated, etc.). My personal experience is that
>> participating in edithatons "just because" is simply not fun nor
>> attractive, there must be something to gain from it (promoting a specific
>> cause, getting good grades, etc). We should indeed get innovative here,
>> and
>> above all, share our experiences, so that we can build something on this
>> together.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Paulo
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Kiril Simeonovski]

Hi Paulo,

I agree that more or less we know what activities are intended for new and
what for experienced users. The challenging part is to make a sensible
decision on whether to reach out to new users using the visual editor and
the translation tool or to continue with the old-fashioned code editor.
There are multiple pros and cons of either decision but it is reasonable to
believe that these tools were developed for some specific purpose. This
will gain even more weight once the mobile editing gets improved.

Other examples soliciting important decisions are whether and how to allow
new users to use videos across articles or how to shape an article's
structure that differs from the standard one. In many cases, people that we
reach out to are smart in pinpointing Wikipedia's weaknesses and are eager
to propose innovative solutions that primarily aim at making the articles
reader-friendlier. The problem is that a general community consensus can
not be easily bypassed even when the novelty is an obvious improvement and
the changes usually get rejected as good-faith attempts.

Best,
Kiril

On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 19:09 Paulo Santos Perneta 
wrote:

> Kiril Simeonovski  escreveu no dia segunda,
> 31/12/2018 à(s) 10:05:
>
>
>
> > some innovations. The problem with expanding an unchanged and obsolete
> > infrastructure to underrepresented groups might result to no avail and
> > further incentivise a major shift, thus doubling the cost invested in
> > infrastructure. Definitely, it is an open topic to discuss whether
> outreach
> > to new communities should be done using the old methods or experimenting
> > with something new.
> >
>
> I've been experimenting this personally for some time, firstly with the
> Art+Feminism initiative, which past experience has shown to be highly
> counterproductive if handled in a simple, amateurish way - events have been
> organized here in Portugal without appropriate support, which resulted in
> massive eliminations of the articles created, with a consequent
> traumatizing experience for the people that took part in them, that never
> again wanted to hear about Wikipedia. The 1lib1ref in its basic form also
> do not seem to be ideal to catch the attention of librarians over here, but
> alternative ways of organizing it seem to result. Edithatons in general
> have shown to be a bad option for reaching to new editors, except in the
> cases where we have some motivated work force already available (feminist
> activists, students being evaluated, etc.). My personal experience is that
> participating in edithatons "just because" is simply not fun nor
> attractive, there must be something to gain from it (promoting a specific
> cause, getting good grades, etc). We should indeed get innovative here, and
> above all, share our experiences, so that we can build something on this
> together.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Paulo
> ___
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> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

Kiril Simeonovski  escreveu no dia segunda,
31/12/2018 à(s) 10:05:



> some innovations. The problem with expanding an unchanged and obsolete
> infrastructure to underrepresented groups might result to no avail and
> further incentivise a major shift, thus doubling the cost invested in
> infrastructure. Definitely, it is an open topic to discuss whether outreach
> to new communities should be done using the old methods or experimenting
> with something new.
>

I've been experimenting this personally for some time, firstly with the
Art+Feminism initiative, which past experience has shown to be highly
counterproductive if handled in a simple, amateurish way - events have been
organized here in Portugal without appropriate support, which resulted in
massive eliminations of the articles created, with a consequent
traumatizing experience for the people that took part in them, that never
again wanted to hear about Wikipedia. The 1lib1ref in its basic form also
do not seem to be ideal to catch the attention of librarians over here, but
alternative ways of organizing it seem to result. Edithatons in general
have shown to be a bad option for reaching to new editors, except in the
cases where we have some motivated work force already available (feminist
activists, students being evaluated, etc.). My personal experience is that
participating in edithatons "just because" is simply not fun nor
attractive, there must be something to gain from it (promoting a specific
cause, getting good grades, etc). We should indeed get innovative here, and
above all, share our experiences, so that we can build something on this
together.

Cheers,

Paulo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

I expect the degree of incidence of vandalism and its patterns would remain
the same in the brethren articles as in the parent one, so more items to
watchlist should not be a problem (it will be shown moreless the same times
as if it was in one piece, but showing the parts). It can also allow for
protections on those parts more prone to vandalism, leaving the main
article unprotected, which is a plus, and actually reduces the number of
things we have to watch for. Similarly, it can attract "specialized
watchers" which are only interested in the genealogy of Cristiano Ronaldo,
but don't care the least about his football skills (just an example), which
would otherwise never watch the whole thing, since almost all the regular
editions would be about football. Overally it seems a good idea to split,
and keep only the more generic stuff in the main thing, indeed.

Cheers,

Paulo

Peter Southwood  escreveu no dia segunda,
31/12/2018 à(s) 08:57:

> I would see more items to watchlist, as in place of one large item you
> would have all the components to worry about.
> I don't follow the easier to de-orphanise aspect.
> Also don’t see how having to have the reference section on half a dozen
> sub-articles is simpler than having the whole list on one. In the extreme
> case where no reference is used in multiple sections, it would be roughly
> the same, where a reference is used across several sections, which is
> common, it looks like more work: from a little more, to a lot more.
> Unless I misunderstand your meaning...
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Jane Darnell
> Sent: 31 December 2018 10:41
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
>
> 1) Not that I know of, 2) not that I know of, 3) fewer items to watchlist
> and maintain (if one creates them), easier to de-orphanize articles, and
> easier to curate pieces of large wikipages where it's hard to check the
> relevant used references.
>
> On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 9:14 AM Peter Southwood <
> peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
>
> > Does the technology exist? Is it available?
> > How does this splitting make maintenance easier?
> > Cheers,
> > Peter
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> > Behalf Of Jane Darnell
> > Sent: 30 December 2018 15:42
> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
> >
> > Well it is not difficult to imagine when you consider for example line
> > items in the case of list articles. Many lists could be split into such
> > line items and kept in a static assembled form by some sort of "assembly
> > template". Many of these line items are either articles or parts of
> > articles. Such "line items" may or may not have Wikidata items, may or
> may
> > not be suitable for Wikidata items, and may or may not be able to be
> > structured in any way, shape or form than the one they currently have. I
> > would like to be able to address these "line items" as "findable editing
> > snippets" in the wikiverse, possibly curatable by voice activation,
> > reversing the way we can sometimes get them read to us by Siri/Lexa.
> >
> > On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 1:48 PM Peter Southwood <
> > peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Jane,
> > > I do not understand what parts you would split these things into, or
> how
> > > they would make Wikipedia easier to curate and edit. Could you link to
> an
> > > explanation or clarify the concept?
> > > Cheers,
> > > Peter
> > >
> > >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
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> >
> > ---
> > This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
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> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

Yaroslav Blanter  escreveu no dia domingo, 30/12/2018
à(s) 13:55:


> Re milennials: this is clearly not a red herring. Just ask Facebook what
> their demographics is and why the 18- generation is not using it.
>

Stats show that Galinha Pintadinha was one of the most viewed articles in
2018 at the Portuguese Wikipedia:
https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=pt.wikipedia.org=all-access=user=2017-12=2018-11=Galinha_Pintadinha

I seem to recall it got the 3rd place, but was undoubtedly among the 10
first. Galinha Pintadinha is a very sucessful Brazilian project that
produces songs for children. Apparently those hits are being caused by
children looking for the songs, who click on the Wikipedia article because
it was among the first hits on Google (apparently it's not anymore, and the
hits went down dramatically, accordingly). What this tells is that
apparently an incredible number of very young children already have an easy
access to Wikipedia, and from direct experience at wiki.pt, many of them
stay there editing on the things they like, primarily animation series like
Naruto. We get a lot of new editors who have about 9-12 years old,
confirmed. While this brings a lot of new issues, because our old,
"plastered" Wikipedia project is not really prepared to deal with children
as editors, it's also very refreshing to observe that the community is
continuously renewing itself.

At least in the Portuguese Wikipedia, a large, large fraction of our
readers are children and teens, and a large fraction of our editors are
teens - and this is not limited to Brazil, it's a phenomena I've been
observing at the Portuguese speaking African countries, where our editors
are in general very young, and even in Portugal. The only common trend here
with what is generally publicly stated about Wikipedia is that it's mostly
boys and young men, which should bring about some meditation about what
could be the true causes of the Wikipedia gender gap. Girls and young women
are indeed very rare as editors (though apparently they read and externally
use us a lot).

This is not inline with that idea that we are losing the young generations,
at least in the Portuguese speaking world. Surely they complain a lot about
the usability of the project, and the outdated looks of it (that kind of
1990s flashback), but that is a common complaint that seem to cross all
generations.

While we are at it, some anecdotic evidence of another curious phenomena
I've observed at a recent Wikidata workshop we've organized at our National
Library. We were expecting a participation mostly by young people, since it
was mostly technical stuff. Instead, most of the participants were
archivists and librarians with more than 40 years old, many above 50, 60,
and up. And it was a success, they appeared to be kind of native to
Wikidata, even if it was the first time they were touching it. A large
number of them were women, too, I seem to recall the majority. I've been
observing 10 years old featuring articles and getting to the rank of sysop
at Wiki.pt (nobody knew how old they were at the time :P ), and now I'm
seeing senior people at retirement age engaging with Wikidata - reality
often is very different from what we imagine a priori.

I believe the potential is all there, we just need to understand who our
targets are, and the proper way to get to them. And be creative on the ways
to approach, not getting stuck to the old edithatons (of which efficiency I
have many doubts, apart from some specific situations such as art+feminism
which are also about activism, and so have a potential to result).

Re main point: People, let us be serious. We missed mobile editing (well,
> at least this has been identified as a problem, and something is being done
> about it).


Mobile editing really is a problem. I've been trying for months to engage
new editors in Guinea-Bissau and Angola, and mobile editing really has
shown to be a very powerful barrier for the participation on those places
where everybody has a cell phone (sometimes even 3 of them, as I've been
told is the case in Guinea-Bissau), but desktop computers are extremely
rare.

We missed voice interfaces. We are now missing neural networks.
> We should have been discussing by now what neural networks are allowed to
> do in the projects and what they are not allowed to do. And instead we are
> discussing (and edit-warring) whether the Crimean bridge is the longest in
> Europe or not because different sources place the border between Europe and
> Asia differently, and, according to some sources, the bridge is not in
> Europe. Why do you think that if we keep missing all technological
> development relevant in the field we are still going to survive?


i don't believe it is correct to mix those things. The people that edit-war
about trifles are often not the same that can propose, discuss and develop
those higher scale improvements and evolutions; or at least they are in a
very different mindset when they are doing 

[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] The Signpost – Volume 14, Issue 13 – 24 December 2018

[Wikipedia Signpost]

>From the editors: Where to draw the line in reporting?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/From_the_editors

Op-ed: Wikipedia not trumped by Trump appointee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/Op-ed

Special report: The Signpost got 380,000+ views in 2018, sounds reasonable
enough, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/Special_report

News and notes: Some wishes do come true
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/News_and_notes

In the media: Political hijinks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/In_the_media

Discussion report: A new record low for RfA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/Discussion_report

WikiProject report: Articlegenesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/WikiProject_report

Arbitration report: Year ends with one active case
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/Arbitration_report

Traffic report: Queen dethroned by U.S. presidents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/Traffic_report

Gallery: Sun and moon, water and stone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/Gallery

Blog: News from the WMF
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/Blog

Humour: I believe in Bigfoot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/Humour

Essay: Requests for medication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/Essay

>From the archives: Compromised admin accounts – again
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-12-24/From_the_archives


Single-page view
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single


https://facebook.com/wikisignpost
https://twitter.com/wikisignpost

-- 
*Signpost* team
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Jane Darnell]

Well of course it is impossible for me to peek in the kitchens of all other
Wikipedia article creators, but speaking for myself, I don't blindly type
into a blank editing window but prepare the way forward by knitting a
sweater of edits, generally across various projects, including other
language Wikipedias. I of course use Google to do the heavy lifting, often
triggered by some annoying incorrect thing I heard from Siri/Alexa, but it
could also be something inspiring I got off social media that made me
curious. I rarely go from inspiration to page creation in one go, and the
whole process sometimes takes me years. In the course of my tenure as a
Wikipedia editor, I have built up quite a library of random articles,
though most of them are related in some way to Dutch 17th century art.
Since becoming active on Wikidata, I have also built quite a library of
listeria lists in my userspace and elsewhere to check related edits across
projects and these sort of drown out everything else in my watchlists
unless I select a specific namespace only. In general, an article in my
process moves from "quote in Wikitext somewhere" to "quote+cited source(s)
in Wikitext somewhere" to  "quote+cited source(s)+media file in Wikitext
somewhere",  to  "quote+cited source(s)+Commons category for media file(s)
in Wikitext somewhere" before it ever sees the light of day as a
stand-alone article. These "pipeline nuggets" are often also line items in
lists (thus my first explanation), but most of them are not. Once created,
my articles are not orphans, but have a select number of incoming links
that I also try to keep track of. Aside from my own personal "article
pipeline", I also spend time de-orphanizing and interlinking such nuggets
in existing articles and I would love to be able to watch them all in
two-way linked stereo, but that is impossible today.

On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 9:57 AM Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> I would see more items to watchlist, as in place of one large item you
> would have all the components to worry about.
> I don't follow the easier to de-orphanise aspect.
> Also don’t see how having to have the reference section on half a dozen
> sub-articles is simpler than having the whole list on one. In the extreme
> case where no reference is used in multiple sections, it would be roughly
> the same, where a reference is used across several sections, which is
> common, it looks like more work: from a little more, to a lot more.
> Unless I misunderstand your meaning...
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Jane Darnell
> Sent: 31 December 2018 10:41
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
>
> 1) Not that I know of, 2) not that I know of, 3) fewer items to watchlist
> and maintain (if one creates them), easier to de-orphanize articles, and
> easier to curate pieces of large wikipages where it's hard to check the
> relevant used references.
>
> On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 9:14 AM Peter Southwood <
> peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
>
> > Does the technology exist? Is it available?
> > How does this splitting make maintenance easier?
> > Cheers,
> > Peter
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> > Behalf Of Jane Darnell
> > Sent: 30 December 2018 15:42
> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
> >
> > Well it is not difficult to imagine when you consider for example line
> > items in the case of list articles. Many lists could be split into such
> > line items and kept in a static assembled form by some sort of "assembly
> > template". Many of these line items are either articles or parts of
> > articles. Such "line items" may or may not have Wikidata items, may or
> may
> > not be suitable for Wikidata items, and may or may not be able to be
> > structured in any way, shape or form than the one they currently have. I
> > would like to be able to address these "line items" as "findable editing
> > snippets" in the wikiverse, possibly curatable by voice activation,
> > reversing the way we can sometimes get them read to us by Siri/Lexa.
> >
> > On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 1:48 PM Peter Southwood <
> > peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Jane,
> > > I do not understand what parts you would split these things into, or
> how
> > > they would make Wikipedia easier to curate and edit. Could you link to
> an
> > > explanation or clarify the concept?
> > > Cheers,
> > > Peter
> > >
> > >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Kiril Simeonovski]

*(The message has been re-sent because of an unfinished part left in the
original one.)*

Hi all,

Yaroslav has brought some very relevant points that unfortunately have not
been discussed in great detail in the past but my conclusions differ a bit
from those that he has drawn and the main source of the concerns he has
identified. My thoughts are summarised in turn.

Firstly, Wikipedia does not seem to be endangered by the dramatic decrease
in attention that people pay to written knowledge. Distribution of
knowledge through new channels that emerged as a result of the
technological evolution is becoming more popular but is simply insufficient
for acquiring knowledge and creating a base for further learning assuming
that people go beyond using it to check simple facts. For instance,
nowadays you can take an online course on edX or Coursera to get knowledge
of any scientific field but this is something that will never make you a
good scientist; you can also play online chess and watch online videos and
commentaries but this will not make you a strong chess player. Books (a
form of written knowledge) are simply a must for advanced learning and this
is something that is not going to easily change in near future, hence
Wikipedia has its strength in place as a medium for converting the written
knowledge from the books in a brief and more reader-friendly manner. My
main concern, however, is that some topics are not covered in a simple way
and require far advanced knowledge as a prerequisite for understanding
(e.g. articles on topics in mathematics) and are poorly linked to the other
relevant Wikimedia projects (e.g. Wikibooks) due to the lack of content.
Simplifying the way these topics are covered would be, of course, be
beneficial for many readers.

Secondly, a major source of concern is the evolution of the Wikimedia
Foundation from an NGO to a technology corporation that does not show any
signs of addressing issues like this and how people in the developed world
are being affected by it. I have full respect to some employees who have
excellent understanding about the movement and the major upcoming
challenges (mostly coming from the community) but there are simply too many
outsiders who do not even know the basics of the movement and do not care
at all about people in the movement who are not affiliated with them or are
not hangers-on to their agenda. The problem is becoming even more serious
with their strategic objective to focus on underrepresented communities
primarily from the Global South through collaboration with the largest
affiliates from the Global North and pretending that the unaffiliated
active contributors from the developed countries do not exist. This whole
thing has probably culminated with the Wikimedia 2030 strategy, where
no-one knows what its final outcome should look like, but much effort was
put to make a base on unreal assumptions and it will apparently get forced
through (fantasty world). My main concern is that they might even start to
force you away from the movement in the event of not agreeing with what
would probably become an open window for the future of Wikipedia.

Thirdly, the reason why our long-standing contributors from the Global
North make the unpopular decision to go away can be derived from my
previous point. These people have very good understanding of how the
movement was created, what the original purpose of the Wikimedia Foundation
was supposed to be and how the recent developments contradict it. Some of
them even go so far to say that they feel frustrated from the misuse of
their volunteer efforts to build the largest encyclopedia in the world and
now to see getting unheard, while some think that the Wikimedia Foundation
has made a paradigm shift in the motivation to edit from contributing to
the fastest-growing knowledge-based project in the late 2000s to getting
hired by the Wikimedia Foundation to earn above-average income in the late
2010s (conclusion drawn from direct communication with people).
Fortunately, this is still in a normal range but the unfavourable rate of
change gives me the intuition that it might turn into an overkill.

Lastly, the lack of focus on technology-related issues and the increasing
need to adapt to the environmental changes is becoming increasingly
difficult with no clear intent for major infrastructural shift. The
community-based rather than technology-based strategic orientation, allbeit
common sense, might become very costly if not properly ameliorated with
some innovations. The problem with expanding an unchanged and obsolete
infrastructure to underrepresented groups might result to no avail and
further incentivise a major shift, thus doubling the cost invested in
infrastructure. Definitely, it is an open topic to discuss whether outreach
to new communities should be done using the old methods or experimenting
with something new.

I am sorry for the extensive text but there are things that need to be
discussed.

Best,
Kiril

On 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Kiril Simeonovski]

Hi all,

Yaroslav has brought some very relevant points that unfortunately have not
been discussed in great detail in the past but my conclusions differ a bit
from those that he has drawn and the main source of the concerns he has
identified. My thoughts are summarised in turn.

Firstly, Wikipedia do not seem to be endangered by the dramatic decrease in
attention that people pay to written knowledge. Distribution of knowledge
through new channels that emerged as a result of the technological
evolution is becoming more popular but is simply insufficient for acquiring
knowledge and creating a base for further learning assuming that people go
beyond using it to check simple facts. For instance, nowadays you can take
an online course on edX or Coursera to get knowledge of any scientific
field but this is something that will never make you a good scientist; you
can also play online chess and watch online videos and commentaries but
this will not make you a strong chess player. Books (a form of written
knowledge) are simply a must for advanced learning and this is something
that is not going to easily change in near future, hence Wikipedia has its
strength in place as a medium for converting the written knowledge from the
books in a brief and more reader-friendly manner. My main concern, however,
is that some topics are not covered in a simple way and require far
advanced knowledge as a prerequisite for understanding (e.g. articles on
topics in mathematics) and are poorly linked to the other relevant
Wikimedia projects (e.g. Wikibooks) due to the lack of content. Simplifying
the way these topics are covered would be, of course, be beneficial for
many readers.

Secondly, a major source of concern is the evolution of the Wikimedia
Foundation from an NGO to a technology corporation that does not show any
signs of addressing issues like this and how people in the developed world
are being affected by it. I have full respect to some employees who have
excellent understanding about the movement and the major upcoming
challenges (mostly coming from the community) but there are simply too many
outsiders who does not even know the basics of the movement and do not care
at all to people in the movement who are not affiliated with them or are
not hangers-on to their agenda. The problem is becoming even more serious
with their strategic objective to focus on underrepresented communities
primarily from the Global South through collaboration with the largest
affiliates from the Global North and pretending that the unaffiliated
active contributors from the developed countries do not exist. This whole
thing has probably culminated with the Wikimedia 2030 strategy, where
no-one knows what its final outcome should look like, but much effort was
put to make a base on unreal assumptions and it will apparently get forced
through (fantasty world). My main concern is that they might even start to
force you away from the movement in the

Thirdly, the reason why our long-standing contributors from the Global
North make the unpopular decision to go away can be derived from my
previous point. These people have very good understanding of how the
movement was created, what the original purpose of the Wikimedia Foundation
was supposed to be and how the recent developments contradict it. Some of
them even go so far to say that they feel frustrated from the misuse of
their volunteer efforts to build the largest encyclopedia in the world and
now to see getting unheard, while some think that the Wikimedia Foundation
has made a paradigm shift in the motivation to edit from contributing to
the fastest-growing knowledge-based project in the late 2000s to getting
hired by the Wikimedia Foundation to earn above-average income in the late
2010s (conclusion drawn from direct communication with people).
Fortunately, this is still in a normal range but the unfavourable rate of
change gives me the intuition that it might turn into an overkill.

Lastly, the lack of focus on technology-related issues and the increasing
need to adapt to the environmental changes is becoming increasingly
difficult with no clear intent for major infrastructural shift. The
community-based rather than technology-based strategic orientation, allbeit
common sense, might become very costly if not properly ameliorated with
some innovations. The problem with expanding an unchanged and obsolete
infrastructure to underrepresented groups might result to no avail and
further incentivise a major shift, thus doubling the cost invested in
infrastructure. Definitely, it is an open topic to discuss whether outreach
to new communities should be done using the old methods or experimenting
with something new.

I am sorry for the extensive text but there are things that need to be
discussed.

Best,
Kiril

On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 9:14 AM Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> Does the technology exist? Is it available?
> How does this splitting make maintenance easier?
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Peter Southwood]

I would see more items to watchlist, as in place of one large item you would 
have all the components to worry about.
I don't follow the easier to de-orphanise aspect.
Also don’t see how having to have the reference section on half a dozen 
sub-articles is simpler than having the whole list on one. In the extreme case 
where no reference is used in multiple sections, it would be roughly the same, 
where a reference is used across several sections, which is common, it looks 
like more work: from a little more, to a lot more.
Unless I misunderstand your meaning...
Cheers,
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Jane Darnell
Sent: 31 December 2018 10:41
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

1) Not that I know of, 2) not that I know of, 3) fewer items to watchlist
and maintain (if one creates them), easier to de-orphanize articles, and
easier to curate pieces of large wikipages where it's hard to check the
relevant used references.

On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 9:14 AM Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> Does the technology exist? Is it available?
> How does this splitting make maintenance easier?
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Jane Darnell
> Sent: 30 December 2018 15:42
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
>
> Well it is not difficult to imagine when you consider for example line
> items in the case of list articles. Many lists could be split into such
> line items and kept in a static assembled form by some sort of "assembly
> template". Many of these line items are either articles or parts of
> articles. Such "line items" may or may not have Wikidata items, may or may
> not be suitable for Wikidata items, and may or may not be able to be
> structured in any way, shape or form than the one they currently have. I
> would like to be able to address these "line items" as "findable editing
> snippets" in the wikiverse, possibly curatable by voice activation,
> reversing the way we can sometimes get them read to us by Siri/Lexa.
>
> On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 1:48 PM Peter Southwood <
> peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
>
> > Jane,
> > I do not understand what parts you would split these things into, or how
> > they would make Wikipedia easier to curate and edit. Could you link to an
> > explanation or clarify the concept?
> > Cheers,
> > Peter
> >
> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Peter Southwood]

The problem with using simple language in complex topics is that simple 
language almost always needs far more words to say the same thing. The simpler 
the language, the more words are needed, assuming that the original was not 
unnecessarily verbose. This is why specialist terms exist: they require 
previous knowledge, but can reduce the number of words needed to explain. The 
alternative is dumbing down, lies-to-children, Wittgenstein's ladder, and that 
sort of thing. Ideally all of these options would be available to the reader, 
who could choose the level which works best for themselves.

Editors who have invested a lot of effort to produce a technically correct and 
comprehensive explanation will nor look kindly at dumbing down the article, but 
may be entirely unconcerned about an alternative explanation provided in 
parallel with the more correct version. To a large extent, that is the 
intention of the lead specification, but one person's excessively complex is 
another's needless dumbing down. Procrustean methods will fail almost everyone. 
Alternative explanations can allow a "just right" version for more readers. 
This is obviously more work for editors, and just as obviously, the versions 
should be consistent with each other, so more work again. It is somewhat like 
translating, but in the same language. 

Many editors would probably consider this a waste of time. They don’t have to 
do it, we are volunteers.  Others would consider it very important. Maybe they 
will do it. I think that linking articles with the same title between en: and 
simple: could be a relatively easy way of testing the utility of the concept. 
And I don’t mean the sidebar link that most readers do not know about (does it 
even exist on mobile?), I mean something obvious and self-explanatory in the 
title area. 

Cheers,
Peter Southwood



-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Anders Wennersten
Sent: 30 December 2018 14:50
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

Thats excellent. It is just then to live up to that guidline, and foster 
people who can simplity the lead sections

For myself I remember how hard it was to get an educated physisct to 
write of the Coriolis effect in the lead section to make it 
understandable. He just squeemed that with simple language then it is no 
correct. And in it there is animations but without proper text it is 
impossible to understand

Anders

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force is not easy to take in




Den 2018-12-30 kl. 13:23, skrev David Gerard:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section
> says pretty much the same:
>
>> The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's 
>> topic. It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the 
>> topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any 
>> prominent controversies. The notability of the article's subject is usually 
>> established in the first few sentences.
> that is, the intro section should be a short standalone article:
>
>> As a general rule of thumb, a lead section should contain no more than four 
>> well-composed paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate.
> For an extreme case, [[World War II]] gets *five* long paragraphs for
> its intro section.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
> On Sun, 30 Dec 2018 at 10:57, Anders Wennersten
>  wrote:
>> In my little duckpond (svwp) we have guidleines for the introduction
>> part of the article.
>>
>> It should use (simple) language to enable 14-16 years old to understand
>> it (while the rest can use more complicated vocabulary)
>>
>> It should hopefully only be 1-3 sentences, and to state what is all
>> about and not a summary.
>>
>> We do not live up to this recommendation all the time, but I have
>> noticed that he introducion part on enwp generally are very long, in
>> comparison
>>
>> Anders
>>
>>
>>
>> Den 2018-12-30 kl. 11:39, skrev Zubin JAIN:
 I am 51, and I do not know much about the 18- generation, but I know two
>>> important things about them. They have a very short attention span and
>>> difficulties to concentrate. And they get a graphical and visualized
>>> information much more easier than texts. For example, my son is capable of
>>> watching three or four movies per day, but he has difficulties to read 20
>>> pages from a book.
>>>
 Well, the first question is whether an encyclopedia is an appropriate / the
>>> best format for them to get knowledge (as it is for us). I do not know the
>>> answer. What I write below assumes that the answer is positive, otherwise
>>> the rest of the text does not make sense.
>>>
 The next question is what should be done. How Wikipedia should look like to
>>> be accessible to this generation? The answer seems to be obvious. Articles
>>> must be short and contain a lot of graphic information. May be they need 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

[Peter Southwood]

Does the technology exist? Is it available?
How does this splitting make maintenance easier?
Cheers,
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Jane Darnell
Sent: 30 December 2018 15:42
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?

Well it is not difficult to imagine when you consider for example line
items in the case of list articles. Many lists could be split into such
line items and kept in a static assembled form by some sort of "assembly
template". Many of these line items are either articles or parts of
articles. Such "line items" may or may not have Wikidata items, may or may
not be suitable for Wikidata items, and may or may not be able to be
structured in any way, shape or form than the one they currently have. I
would like to be able to address these "line items" as "findable editing
snippets" in the wikiverse, possibly curatable by voice activation,
reversing the way we can sometimes get them read to us by Siri/Lexa.

On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 1:48 PM Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> Jane,
> I do not understand what parts you would split these things into, or how
> they would make Wikipedia easier to curate and edit. Could you link to an
> explanation or clarify the concept?
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
>
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