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they have been warned themselves, they mimic the behavior perpetually, not even stopping to think how useless and outdated they came to be, how hard it is for a newbie to understand they exist at all, let alone what they are for, and that throwing warnings designed in 2006 and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 <amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> 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 > > 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, > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > > > --- > > This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. > > https://www.avg.com > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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, > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ > 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, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ 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, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
