[Wikimedia-l] IRC with pan-Indian community

[Ananth Subray]

Dear All,

Wish you a Happy New Year, I am writing this email to inform you that we
will be having the Pan-Indian community IRC on  13-01-2019  (@8:00 PM)[1].
The agenda of the meeting will be as follows:

   - General discussion and recent development related to Wikisource.
   - TTT-2019 General discussion.
   - Wikidata General discussion.
   - Open for General discussion after the above-mentioned points.

[1].https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#cis-a2k

Thanks and Regards,


*ANANTH SUBRAY P V*

Programme Associate

Access to Knowledge program

The Centre for Internet & Society

+91-9739811664
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Update and feedback results from the Wikimedia's chairpersons retreat

[Pine W]

Hi Itzik,

I understand your good point regarding the difficulty of scheduling due to
chairpersons' availability for volunteer activities. Would having online
meetings make scheduling be easier?

I think that I understand your choice to use an external facilitator. I am
willing to support spending money when I think that the benefits make the
costs worthwhile. Also, I support spending money on pilot projects when I
think that the risks are reasonable. I want people to feel okay about
taking some risks with pilot projects. If a pilot project fails completely,
sometimes that is okay after a well-considered decision was made to take
the risk and the people who attempted the pilot project did a reasonably
good job in the circumstances. I wouldn't want a failed pilot project to
have unanticipated costs of hundreds of hours of volunteers' time or many
thousands of donated dollars to clean up, so not every failure of a pilot
project is okay, but I can support some failures and reasonable expenses. I
have failed myself on more than one occasion, and with experience I am
getting better at understanding how failures happen and recovering faster,
and having a more positive attitude about some types of failures. So, I
support other people making pilot projects, taking some risks, and spending
some time and money, even if some projects fail. The chairs' meetings seem
to be successful, and I hope that the meetings will continue. Thanks for
your work on these meetings.

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )


On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 10:58 AM Itzik - Wikimedia Israel <
it...@wikimedia.org.il> wrote:

> Hi Pine,
>
> So far the chairperson meetings took place during Wikimedia Summit or
> Wikimania, and some other were online. So yes, undoubtedly there are ways
> to prevent more travels, and this is what we did for the past four years.
>
> You mentioned three factors about international meetings, but you forgot
> one important one. The chairpersons are volunteers, so the element of
> vacation days is also a factor which we need to consider when we evaluate
> such volunteers meetings. Adding another two days meeting to Wikimania for
> example (which was this year in a distant destination) - can mean almost a
> week off to the ones that would have participated. Also, we worked to
> arrange this meeting for a quite long time, additional to other
> work-related and our affiliate's obligations. And even if we wanted, we
> couldn't be ready enough with this meeting enough time before Wikimania, in
> a way that will also give enough notice time to the chairs (some of them
> didn't attend Wikimania this year).
>
> As far as we were concerned, it was a pilot, so it was very important for
> us to be assisted by an external facilitator and to be immediately
> attentive to feedback to assess the value of the meeting.
>
> Thank you for the warm words in your email summary.
>
>
> *Itzik Edri*
> Chairperson
> it...@wikimedia.org.il
> +972-54-5878078
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 5:39 AM Pine W  wrote:
>
> > Hi Itzik, Frans, and Vojtěch,
> >
> > I am very behind on email but I wanted to say thanks for sharing this
> > report from the chairpersons' meeting.
> >
> > I am wondering whether, for the purposes of (1) increasing the cost
> > effectiveness of travel expenses, (2) reducing the negative environmental
> > effects from travel, and (3) increasing the number of chairpersons who
> > participate, if future meetings could be scheduled immediately before or
> > after Wikimania or the Wikimedia (WMF + Affiliates) Summit.
> Alternatively,
> > future meetings could be held online so that travel is not necessary.
> What
> > do you think?
> >
> > Thanks again for sharing this report. I get the impression that the
> > chairpersons found the meeting to be valuable, and I hope that similar
> > meetings will happen in the future. My guess is that being a chair of a
> > Wikimedia affiliate can require significant time and involve difficult
> > conversations. I'm grateful for those who volunteer their time to serve.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Pine
> > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Dec 3, 2018 at 8:31 PM Itzik - Wikimedia Israel <
> > it...@wikimedia.org.il> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > For four years now, since Wikimania 2014 in London, the chairpersons of
> > the
> > > recognized chapters have met as a group twice a year, during Wikimania
> > and
> > > the Wikimedia Conference (now the Wikimedia Summit), usually for 1 - 2
> > > hours during one of the lunch breaks.
> > >
> > > I started to arrange these meetings as an opportunity for the
> > chairpersons
> > > to meet, and the concept of these meetings at the beginning was to host
> > > every time a different person from our movement.
> > >
> > > Later on, Tim Moritz Hector (WMDE) and Frans Grijzenhout (WMNL) joined
> to
> > > help me arrange and plan these meetings, and as result also from the
> > > feedback of the other chairs, we changed the 

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

[Yethrosh]

I believe much depends on Wikipedia Mobile app. Users are mostly on mobile
now and they feel it natural to do any thing from mobile. If only, creating
articles and adding citations could be done easily through mobile app, can
make a big difference.

On Mon, 31 Dec 2018, 2:22 a.m. David Cuenca Tudela  Answering the initial question: It depends on how you understand "death".
> Wikipedia is the manifestation of a collection of algorithms running in the
> minds of thousands of people. With time it could become less popular to run
> that algorithm in your life, or you would like to try a different one. With
> less people then the Wikipedias would be different as they are today. More
> out-of-date information, less capacity to oversee the project, stagnation,
> and perhaps eventually irrelevance. Myspace, digg, and winamp are still
> alive, however people prefer other options these days.
>
> I think it is important to move with the flow, and open new opportunities
> for collaboration as the technology and our contributor base are ready for
> them. Wikidata started 6 years ago, Structured Commons is in the making,
> and who knows what could come next.
>
> In the age of review manipulation and mistrust, I see opportunities in
> identifying thought leaders, and building a balanced critique on a subject
> based on multiple sources. Wikipedia does this partially, but it is not its
> main aim. Assigning trust to people or organizations is something that the
> community does quite well, so it could be applied to other contexts.
>
> A snippet-pedia also sounds useful, specially if a topic could be explained
> with different levels of complexity. Layman's explanations are really
> useful and there are communities built around them (for instance ELI5 with
> 16 million subscribers), however their explanations are neither
> collaborative nor structured, so it is quite difficult to improve them or
> navigate them.
>
> It doesn't matter so much that Wikipedia "dies", what matters is that the
> Wikimedia community adapts with new projects that keep the spirit of
> gathering, organizing, and sharing knowledge alive. Perhaps we could also
> consider other approaches that could be executed in real life. With diverse
> approaches, there would be different kind of contributors, aka more
> diversity. I would definitely welcome projects that would attract 90% of
> female contributors, even if they are radically different and they are not
> a wiki. In the end our mission is to enable everyone to share knowledge,
> not necessarily encyclopedic, and not necessarily using current technology.
> Just because we have a hammer doesn't mean that all problems can be solved
> with it.
>
> Regards,
> Micru
>
> On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 10:35 PM Yaroslav Blanter 
> wrote:
>
> > I have written a long text today (posted in my FB) which the readers of
> > this mailing list might find interesting. I copy it below. I understand
> > that it is very easy to critisize me for side issues, but if you want to
> > comment/reply I would appreciate if you address the main issue. The
> target
> > audience I was thinking about was general (not necessarily
> > Wikimedia-oriented), and for the readers from this mailing list the first
> > several paragraphs can sound trivial (or even trivial and wrong). I
> > apologize in advance.
> >
> > Cheers
> > Yaroslav
> > _
> > I currently have a bit of time and can write on the future of Wikipedia.
> > Similarly to much of what I write it is probably going to be useless, but
> > someone may find it interesting. For simplicity, I will be explicitly
> > talking about the English Wikipedia (referring to it as Wikipedia). I am
> > active in other projects as well, and some of them have similar issues,
> but
> > there are typically many other things going on there which make the
> picture
> > more complicated.
> >
> > Let us first look at the current situation. Wikipedia exists since 2001,
> > and in a couple of weeks will turn 18. Currently, it has 5.77 million
> > articles. I often hear an opinion that all important articles have
> already
> > been created. This is incorrect, and I am often the first person to point
> > out that this is not correct. For example, today I created an article on
> an
> > urban locality in Russia with the population of 15 thousands. Many
> articles
> > are indeed too short, badly written, or suffer from other issues, and
> they
> > need to be improved. There are new topics which appear on a regular
> basis:
> > new music performers, new winners of sports competitions or prizes, and
> so
> > on. As any Web 2.0 project, Wikipedia requires a regular cleanup, since
> > there are many people happy to vandalize the 5th website in the world in
> > terms of the number of views. However, as a general guideline, it is not
> so
> > much incorrect to state that all important things in Wikipedia have been
> > already written. Indeed, if someone looks for information in Wikipedia -
> > or, more 

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

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
I spend some time formulating my thoughts on the subject. Arguably I am not
a Wikipedian but apart from the necessary changes we must go through, I see
a great future for our work. What I have to say is on my blog [1]. The most
important change is that we need to become less US-American to be more
effective. The most relevant reason: our public is not there.

What will also have a positive effect when we make our relation with
partners less parasitic. more symbiotic. Why not point to Open Library of
the local library when people read about books or authors? Why not show the
publications of scientists based on what we know, largely thanks to ORCID
and Crossref?  We say that Wikipedia should not be quoted but we can make
external source much more findable. Sharing the quest for the sum of all
knowledge is more effective by sharing the limelight with our partners..

Happy 2019
   GerardM

[1]
https://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-decline-of-wikipedia-as-we-know-it.html

On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 at 22:35, Yaroslav Blanter  wrote:

> I have written a long text today (posted in my FB) which the readers of
> this mailing list might find interesting. I copy it below. I understand
> that it is very easy to critisize me for side issues, but if you want to
> comment/reply I would appreciate if you address the main issue. The target
> audience I was thinking about was general (not necessarily
> Wikimedia-oriented), and for the readers from this mailing list the first
> several paragraphs can sound trivial (or even trivial and wrong). I
> apologize in advance.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
> _
> I currently have a bit of time and can write on the future of Wikipedia.
> Similarly to much of what I write it is probably going to be useless, but
> someone may find it interesting. For simplicity, I will be explicitly
> talking about the English Wikipedia (referring to it as Wikipedia). I am
> active in other projects as well, and some of them have similar issues, but
> there are typically many other things going on there which make the picture
> more complicated.
>
> Let us first look at the current situation. Wikipedia exists since 2001,
> and in a couple of weeks will turn 18. Currently, it has 5.77 million
> articles. I often hear an opinion that all important articles have already
> been created. This is incorrect, and I am often the first person to point
> out that this is not correct. For example, today I created an article on an
> urban locality in Russia with the population of 15 thousands. Many articles
> are indeed too short, badly written, or suffer from other issues, and they
> need to be improved. There are new topics which appear on a regular basis:
> new music performers, new winners of sports competitions or prizes, and so
> on. As any Web 2.0 project, Wikipedia requires a regular cleanup, since
> there are many people happy to vandalize the 5th website in the world in
> terms of the number of views. However, as a general guideline, it is not so
> much incorrect to state that all important things in Wikipedia have been
> already written. Indeed, if someone looks for information in Wikipedia -
> or, more precisely, uses search engines and gets Wikipedia as the first hit
>  they are likely to find what they need with more than 99% chance.
>
> In this sense, Wikipedia now is very different from Wikipedia in 2008 or
> Wikipedia in 2004. Ten and especially fifteen years ago, everybody could
> contribute something important. For example, the article on the 1951 film
> "A Streetcar Named Desire", which won four Academy Awards, was started in
> 2005, as well as an article on Cy Twombly, at the time probably the most
> famous living artist. This is not possible anymore. This is why the number
> of active editors is currently dropping - to contribute to the content in a
> meaningful way, one now has to be an advanced amateur - to master some
> field of knowledge much better than most others do. Or one can be a
> professional - but there are very few professionals contributing to
> Wikipedia in their fields, and there are very few articles written at a
> professional level. Attempts to attract professionals have been made for
> many years, and, despite certain local success, generally failed. They have
> been going now for long enough to assume they will never succeed on a large
> scale. Wikipedia is written by advance amateurs for amateurs. However,
> despite the decline in the number of editors, there are enough resources to
> maintain and to expand the project. It does not mean there are no problems
> - there are in fact many problems. One of the most commonly discussed one
> is systemic bias - there is way more information on Wikipedia on subjects
> pertaining to North America than to Africa, and if a topic is viewed on
> differently in different countries, one can be sure that the American view
> dominates. But it is usually thought - and I agree with this - that these
> drawbacks are not 

[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Annual report 2017 for Denmark

[Karen Mardahl]

Here is the annual report for 2017 for Wikimedia Danmark, which was
approved at our general meeting in September.
https://dk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Annual_report_2017

Regards,
Karen Mardahl
Vice Chairman
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Update and feedback results from the Wikimedia's chairpersons retreat

[Itzik - Wikimedia Israel]

Hi Pine,

So far the chairperson meetings took place during Wikimedia Summit or
Wikimania, and some other were online. So yes, undoubtedly there are ways
to prevent more travels, and this is what we did for the past four years.

You mentioned three factors about international meetings, but you forgot
one important one. The chairpersons are volunteers, so the element of
vacation days is also a factor which we need to consider when we evaluate
such volunteers meetings. Adding another two days meeting to Wikimania for
example (which was this year in a distant destination) - can mean almost a
week off to the ones that would have participated. Also, we worked to
arrange this meeting for a quite long time, additional to other
work-related and our affiliate's obligations. And even if we wanted, we
couldn't be ready enough with this meeting enough time before Wikimania, in
a way that will also give enough notice time to the chairs (some of them
didn't attend Wikimania this year).

As far as we were concerned, it was a pilot, so it was very important for
us to be assisted by an external facilitator and to be immediately
attentive to feedback to assess the value of the meeting.

Thank you for the warm words in your email summary.


*Itzik Edri*
Chairperson
it...@wikimedia.org.il
+972-54-5878078




On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 5:39 AM Pine W  wrote:

> Hi Itzik, Frans, and Vojtěch,
>
> I am very behind on email but I wanted to say thanks for sharing this
> report from the chairpersons' meeting.
>
> I am wondering whether, for the purposes of (1) increasing the cost
> effectiveness of travel expenses, (2) reducing the negative environmental
> effects from travel, and (3) increasing the number of chairpersons who
> participate, if future meetings could be scheduled immediately before or
> after Wikimania or the Wikimedia (WMF + Affiliates) Summit. Alternatively,
> future meetings could be held online so that travel is not necessary. What
> do you think?
>
> Thanks again for sharing this report. I get the impression that the
> chairpersons found the meeting to be valuable, and I hope that similar
> meetings will happen in the future. My guess is that being a chair of a
> Wikimedia affiliate can require significant time and involve difficult
> conversations. I'm grateful for those who volunteer their time to serve.
>
> Regards,
>
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 3, 2018 at 8:31 PM Itzik - Wikimedia Israel <
> it...@wikimedia.org.il> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > For four years now, since Wikimania 2014 in London, the chairpersons of
> the
> > recognized chapters have met as a group twice a year, during Wikimania
> and
> > the Wikimedia Conference (now the Wikimedia Summit), usually for 1 - 2
> > hours during one of the lunch breaks.
> >
> > I started to arrange these meetings as an opportunity for the
> chairpersons
> > to meet, and the concept of these meetings at the beginning was to host
> > every time a different person from our movement.
> >
> > Later on, Tim Moritz Hector (WMDE) and Frans Grijzenhout (WMNL) joined to
> > help me arrange and plan these meetings, and as result also from the
> > feedback of the other chairs, we changed the concept to discussions and
> > presentations format in order to speak about issues related to the
> > organizations we represent and our movement in general. We also created a
> > mailing list as a place to get updates but also to raise questions and
> > share information (such as questions related to the organization's
> > policies, ED, board issues and other).
> >
> > About half a year ago, Frans and me thought we had to take these meetings
> > to a higher level, and, for the first time, we proposed to organize a two
> > days meeting, where we can have a dedicated time, without interruptions
> > (and lunch on our tables...) in order to focus on bigger issues.
> >
> > We already have board trainings for new board members, but we don’t have
> > any program which supports the chairpersons as leaders of their boards
> and
> > their organizations. So we decided to focus on improving the
> interpersonal
> > skills and leadership competencies of chairpersons and give them other
> > tools to become better and more effective in their roles.
> >
> > In order to achieve this, we decided to contract an experienced external
> > trainer & facilitator.
> >
> > In the beginning, we planned to have this meeting with all the
> > chairpersons, from the big and from the small chapters. But as the WMF’s
> > grants program were temporarily not accepting new grants requests, we
> > weren't able to get support to finance the participation of the small
> > chapters which didn’t have the budget to cover the costs.
> >
> > So in the end, we hold a smaller meeting a week ago (hosted by WMCZ in
> > Prague), with 17 chairpersons which could cover the travel and meeting
> > costs (with a small grant from the WMF to help to support part of the
> > facilitator's fee).
> >
> > 

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

[Jane Darnell]

Thanks to Yaroslav who started this interesting conversation, and thanks
for all the comments. I agree with lots of them, but especially this: Happy
Public Domain Day!

On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 7:15 AM Amir E. Aharoni 
wrote:

> בתאריך יום א׳, 30 בדצמ׳ 2018, 15:55, מאת Yaroslav Blanter <
> ymb...@gmail.com
> >:
>
> >
> >
> > 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?

[Jonathan Cardy]

Yes the greying of the pedia is a real phenomena, and I am sure that an editor 
survey would confirm that on average we are getting older.

You posit two reasons for the community to be in decline, that the easy 
articles have been written and that it is difficult to edit Wikipedia on a 
mobile. I agree with the second reason, and it is possible that the 2015/16 
rally has run its course. Editing volumes in late 2018 are dropping, but still 
above late 2014 levels, however I am not sure whether that is a real drop or a 
symptom of some of the infobox work moving to Wikidata. I am not convinced 
about your first reason. But there is a third that we should not underestimate, 
over the last decade or so expectations have risen and there is now little room 
for editors who add unsourced content. In quality terms this is a good thing, 
but it has repercussions on the quantity of editors (and I am sure contributes 
to the greying of the pedia). If as I suspect it is true that our decline is 
only among those who add uncited content, and that we are replacing those who 
add cited content as fast or faster than we lose them, then we can dismiss 
editor decline as no longer being an existential threat to the project.

I am sanguine about the mobile editing problem. It is a known issue. People are 
working on it, so we may get a technical fix. Fashions in technology have 
changed in the past and will change again, so we  may find that more people in 
the future have suitable devices to edit with. My own medium turn fix would be 
to launch an intermediate platform for tablets. This would leave the mobile 
platform for smartphone users, and I know we have at least a couple of editors 
who use smartphones, but the ratio of editors to readers is very much lower 
than among PC users. A Tablet platform would enable us  to offer tablet users a 
more editor friendly environment than could fit on the mobile platform.

As for screenagers with damaged attention spans, I think that some research 
would be useful. My expectation is that we would find that a maximum section 
size would be helpful to mobile users, and maybe we should also break up some 
lists into categories of stub articles. But the way to convince the community 
that such changes were useful would be first to commission some research so 
that we could propose evidence based changes. My hope is that if we knew that 
mobile users could only handle sections of a certain length, the Manual of 
Style would be changed and such indigestible articles would at least get 
subheadings.

To go back to the heading. No the death of Wikipedia is not imminent. I have 
known charities and not for profits where the volunteer community was far older 
and more closed than we are, and such volunteer communities can persist for 
decades even if a new generation doesn’t come along. Wikipedia is about to have 
its 18th birthday, if anything kills it in the next decade or two it will be 
something as yet scarcely on our radar as a risk.



Get Outlook for iOS


Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2018 22:34:27 +0100
From: Yaroslav Blanter 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent?
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

I have written a long text today (posted in my FB) which the readers of
this mailing list might find interesting. I copy it below. I understand
that it is very easy to critisize me for side issues, but if you want to
comment/reply I would appreciate if you address the main issue. The target
audience I was thinking about was general (not necessarily
Wikimedia-oriented), and for the readers from this mailing list the first
several paragraphs can sound trivial (or even trivial and wrong). I
apologize in advance.

Cheers
Yaroslav
_
I currently have a bit of time and can write on the future of Wikipedia.
Similarly to much of what I write it is probably going to be useless, but
someone may find it interesting. For simplicity, I will be explicitly
talking about the English Wikipedia (referring to it as Wikipedia). I am
active in other projects as well, and some of them have similar issues, but
there are typically many other things going on there which make the picture
more complicated.

Let us first look at the current situation. Wikipedia exists since 2001,
and in a couple of weeks will turn 18. Currently, it has 5.77 million
articles. I often hear an opinion that all important articles have already
been created. This is incorrect, and I am often the first person to point
out that this is not correct. For example, today I created an article on an
urban locality in Russia with the population of 15 thousands. Many articles
are indeed too short, badly written, or suffer from other issues, and they
need to be improved. There are new topics which appear on a regular basis:
new music performers, new winners of sports competitions or prizes, and so
on. As any Web 2.0