Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wiki Travel Guide
On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:30:45 -0600, James Heilman wrote: @Yaroslov 1) A merger within a WMF project is supported by admins from both WT and WV. WV is going to be meeting on the possibility of merging June 9th in Germany 2) Wikimedia's mission is to provide freely available educational content I am not sure which WMF principles you do not see such a site as being compatible with? You mention that a good travel guide selects information. A good encyclopedia sections information as well. I am not sure why we would encounter any differences? We deal with spam here on Wikipedia all the time. 2a) Not catering to a specific audience is one of the criticisms of Wikipedia. The proposed travel guide would write for a general audience. Wikipedia has written for a general audience with some success. I actually do not have an opinion on whether Wikitravel should or should not be accepted as a WMF prtoject (I am currently leaning to the opinion it should). I just pointed out obvious problems. I maintain a travel guide website since 2004, and I know the issues are not so easy to resolve, especially the audience. This is why they have so many printed guidebook series IRL, and this is why I only used two or three of these series in my life (and other travelers use something else and under no circumstances would use what I use). These issues should be analyzed very carefully before the actual decision has been made. Cheers Yaroslav ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Travel Guide Wiki
On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 11:41, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.comwrote: What I think would be important to avoid is too much subjective information from one individual; for example, where I to write about York, UK I would recommend not going to the Jorvik centre (a main attraction) because I thought it overpriced and boring. Whilst my viewpoint on this is subjectively valid, it may not reflect the overall viewpoint of travellers to York (I know plenty of people who loved it)! NPOV aims to make sure that the most mainstream of these viewpoints if reflected - and any other viewpoints (i.e. hate it) are given space if deemed appropriate. The whole point of a travel guide is subjective information from individuals! However, there are travellers with different interests. Jorvik actually works out pretty well for travellers with children, for instance, but for (young) adults travelling on their own it's pretty overpriced, and not so interesting so that's what the guide should say. I don't think that's NPOV though, because the Jorvik probably think they're pretty awesome for everybody. So in summary I don't see that there is any real difference in our stance on this - it might just need a bit of rethinking. We'd like to express it as Traveller's Point of View. This really ties back into something more important; which is sourcing. I think one thing that WT sorely lacks is secondary sourcing the support the material, and that this would improve its content significantly. I'd be cautious of supporting a new WMF project that avoided sourcing in favour of mostly whatever the editors contribute from their experience. I think a good argument could be made for using personal experience to write a WT guide - but it should also incorporate good sourcing and editorial standards as developed here (Wikinews is a good example of where they successfully manage such a tradeoff). Uh, sourcing? While things like telephone numbers and addresses are clearly sourced from somewhere I tend to think that most travel guide writing is * original* creative work. We've also tried to maintain a slightly cheeky tone, which is hard to do in collaborative work. One further thing worth pointing out; from the discussions so far I gather the current host is unlikely to provide any technical support, such as a full dump for importing? This represents a problem to overcome because of attribution - any import would need a way to record the attribution history of each page (i.e. the authors) to comply with the licensing. I don't think pointing to the original WT page would work because, obviously, that could disappear etc. Just a point to remember. I'm more concerned that now that we're discussing this in a more-or-less public forum that they could get wind of it and start actively resisting. They could make things a bit more difficult, though there are XML back-ups out there which we could fall back on. I still think it's a good idea to not mention them or the collaborative travel guide we're talking about by name for the time being. I do very much prefer to think of them as a hosting provider than an owner, because that's what they do: hosting in return for the right to advertise on the site. They just happen to own the URL and, I believe, the name. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Travel Guide Wiki
We've mainly approached this issue encouraging the different groups of travellers to add relevant content for their areas. We specifically try to mix it all in, because we don't want to section anyone off. There was considerable controversy back in 2005 or so about adding an LBGT section to the guide template: most of the community came down on the side of mixing everything in. Likewise with family-friendly stuff like Jorvik. We have in fact strived for a level of neutrality among different kinds of travel. I think the particular policy document would be worth reading here: Be Fair http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:Be_fair I know, I know, I wrote that I'd rather not name the site, and there I go adding a link. I didn't want to cut and paste. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Travel Guide Wiki
What I think would be important to avoid is too much subjective information from one individual; for example, where I to write about York, UK I would recommend not going to the Jorvik centre (a main attraction) because I thought it overpriced and boring. Whilst my viewpoint on this is subjectively valid, it may not reflect the overall viewpoint of travellers to York (I know plenty of people who loved it)! NPOV aims to make sure that the most mainstream of these viewpoints if reflected - and any other viewpoints (i.e. hate it) are given space if deemed appropriate. The whole point of a travel guide is subjective information from individuals! Is it? I'd define it as useful advice for travellers. Subjective information from only a few people can be useless, because most people will have different viewpoints (for example; I would write about the beautiful historical parts of Amsterdam, but, say, a younger person could just have easily been looking for information on drug tourism). The point of NPOV is balancing these personal priorities to make sure the readers gets lots of useful information. Rather than say Don't bother walking up to the Sacré-Coeur, it's a long climb and not worth the bother you'd say The climb up to Sacré-Coeur can be a long one. However, there are travellers with different interests. Jorvik actually works out pretty well for travellers with children, for instance, but for (young) adults travelling on their own it's pretty overpriced, and not so interesting so that's what the guide should say. Well I went as a child; and would recommend families not to bother (overpriced, not all that interesting). Which possibly hihglights the point? I don't think that's NPOV though, because the Jorvik probably think they're pretty awesome for everybody. Well, yes, but that's not NPOV because the Jorvik centre's view is demonstrably biased :) (i.e. not a travellers perspective). So in summary I don't see that there is any real difference in our stance on this - it might just need a bit of rethinking. We'd like to express it as Traveller's Point of View. I think this is a good name for it. p.s. I read your fair link with interest - I think that is a good way to resolve the issue with clashing of personal experience. However one thing a bigger community brings is a difficulty in resolving these problems (or, they crop up more often). On Wikipedia we can use sources so that uninvolved people can voice an opinion and help resolve the situation - but where this relies on personal experience that is simply not possible. Do you have an approach to help scale this form of dispute resolution? Other questions I had: - What sort of size is the WT community at the moment? - What are the policies/approach to copyright violations and other issues such as slander, etc? - What is the policy r.e. advertising and promotional (quite often, when I use WT, I see a lot of content that seems quite promotional in quality - e.g. for a particular restaurant). Cheers, Tom ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Travel Guide Wiki
Just to highlight my earlier point about sourcing, the article on Florence currently says: Opera was invented in Florence. This happens to be true - but I have no proof of it, and it may well simply be the opinion of the original writer. Much of the rest of the historical section is the same; it is encyclopaedic detail about the city, spiced up for travel guide purposes. I have no issue with the spicing up (it is appropriate in the context), but I think this is the sort of content that can/should be sourced to help the reader be assured the material is true in at least some way (even if there is subjective opinion mixed in). Tom ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Travel Guide Wiki
On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 2:53 AM, Mark Jaroski mark.jaro...@gmail.com wrote: We're under the impression that there are other Wikimedia foundation projects which don't use NPOV, and so those of us favouring approaching WMF have been able to argue that we wouldn't be forced to use it. If that's wrong then we should probably just give up this line of exploration and go find another solution. My impression of sister projects is the same. Not all of the same rules that apply to Wikipedia also apply to sister projects. With the exception of very few mandatory things (like respect for information about living persons), individual projects can determine their own rules and policies as much as they want. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Foundation-l] Volunteers Wanted: Funds Dissemination Process Advisory Group
On 10 April 2012 17:51, Barry Newstead bnewst...@wikimedia.org wrote: If we simply select an FDC (btw - how would this happen?) and ask them to figure out the issues for themselves, this would be a recipe for serious challenges that could doom the FDC from the start. A relatively brief, but structured process that is open, has an effective advisory group of trusted people, and is supported by consultants who can give us structure and help us with the heavy-lifting on process design seems like a solid way to get us to a good outcome and help the FDC get off to an effective start. We would select an FDC by having a discussion on meta about how we think we should select an FDC and then, once we have a consensus, we implement it. That's how we make decisions around, whenever possible. I think we should at least try and reach a consensus rather than just assuming that we need to delegate decision making power to yet another committee. Can you expand on what you mean by serious challenges? Do you mean people will challenge the decisions of the FDC if it isn't spelt out exactly what decisions they should be making and how? In my experience, the opposite is true. If you try and codify exactly what a decision making body is allowed to do then that allows people to challenge it and you end up with situations like the US is facing at the moment with the legislature having passed a law but it's now going through the courts because people are challenging that law. If you take the British approach of parliamentary sovereignty, that doesn't happen. We elect people to make decisions for us and then we let them make those decisions. If they make bad ones, we elect different people next time. (Of course, we complain constantly about the decisions they are making, but that's just good fun!) With the FDC we would have another safety net in the form of the WMF board's veto. Everyone agrees that the FDC is going to be a very powerful body, but you are trying to restrict its power as much as possible. It will be far more effective if you just give it the power to make the decisions that it thinks are best. That is, after all, its job. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] teaching people how to edit Wikipedia
Thanks, Ziko. That's really interesting and sounds like an effective way of getting them started. I'm curious what kinds of problems people contact you about when they start editing for real? On Apr 12, 2012, at 1:45 PM, Ziko van Dijk wrote: Hello, Myself, I have a presentation which shows a basic wiki principle; I noticed that showing the same thing onwiki would make me jumping too much from page to page. Showing Wikipedia functionalities then onwiki I call Wikipedia surfing (version history, talk pages etc.). If it is a workshop with the intention to make people edit then I create a pseudo encyclopedia on user subpages. That's a number of simplified Wikipedia articles with hardly any markup. From article to article, the complexity and amount of wikisyntax grows. The newbies in groups of 2 correct the language and content (I put in some errors for them). I prefer that because editing real WP makes people anxious, and I want to be undisturbed with the newbies. Kind regards Ziko 2012/4/11 Heather Ford hf...@ushahidi.com: Have a quick question for some work I'm doing on Wikipedia literacy: What resources are folks using to teach others how to edit Wikipedia? At Wikipedia Academies etc? Thanks in anticipation :) Best, Heather. Heather Ford Ethnographer: Ushahidi / SwiftRiver http://ushahidi.com | http://swiftly.org @hfordsa on Twitter http://hblog.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht --- ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l Heather Ford Ethnographer: Ushahidi / SwiftRiver http://ushahidi.com | http://swiftly.org @hfordsa on Twitter http://hblog.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
