David, Would your work be influenced by an analysis of the academic biographies which are most searched for that are not on Wikipedia yet? (assuming that such an targeted analysis was available) Cheers, Peter
PS. An analysis that included a check of whether the topic was likely to be notable and a listing of possible sources would also save a lot of wasted effort. Also a check against articles that have been deleted for good reasons, and articles in other languages with a reasonable accessible reference list. -----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Goodman Sent: 12 March 2019 07:15 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers? "with popular topics cannibalizing resources." What resources can be cannibalized? The limiting resource in WP is interested people writing, improving, and validating articles. People choose their own topics. This is different from an organization where staff can be directed to work on what the management think is important. I, for example, almost totally avoid most aspects of what is popular culture--I am neither competent nor interested. ) The topics I work on are those that interest me, mainly academic biographies. I'm sure most people do not think them important. We're volunteers, and must tolerate each others interests. On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 5:06 PM John Erling Blad <jeb...@gmail.com> wrote: > We should be using a grid for what people are reading about, instead > of using countries. That will give a better representation of large > countries vs small countries. It will also better reflect local ethnic > groups. > > On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 1:53 PM Amir E. Aharoni > <amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote: > > > > בתאריך יום א׳, 10 במרץ 2019 ב-23:27 מאת Gerard Meijssen < > > gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>: > > > > > Hoi, > > > I have been thinking about it.. There is a place for research but > really > > > why can we not have the data that allows us to seek out what people are > > > actually looking for and do not find.. Why can we not promote what > proves > > > to be of interest [1] ? > > > > > > > Actually, there was some work done around it. Here are some examples: > > > > 1. The Discovery (Search) team in the Foundation researched searches in > > Wikimedia sites' search box that yielded zero results. This was done in > > 2016 or so, led by Dan Garry as the product manager, and this lead to > some > > improvements in the functionality of Wikimedia sites' internal search > > engine, although I don't remember what they were exactly. > > > > 2. Google's Project Tiger provided lists of articles for which people > often > > search in the Google search engine in India, and about which there are no > > articles in Wikipedias in languages of India. See > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Supporting_Indian_Language_Wikipedias_Program > > > > 3. Last year I made a list of articles that people search for in their > > language using the interlanguage links search box and cannot find. You > can > > see a sample here: > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Amire80/WEIRD/2018-04-09%E2%80%932018-04-15 > > . I plan to make this list nicer-looking and auto-updating some time > soon. > > > > 4. The GapFinder project is another tool that helps people find articles > > that are missing in some wikis: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/GapFinder > > > > 5. This is just an idea, but it's written down, which is a bit better > than > > nothing: Show the most popular articles by country in the PageViews tool, > > rather than just by language. It's documented at > > https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T207171 . The rationale for this is > that > > the most popular English Wikipedia articles in the U.S., Nigeria, India, > > the Philippines, and South Africa are significantly different. The > English > > Wikipedia is the most popular one in all these countries, but whereas it > is > > sensible that it's popular in the U.S., it's a bit depressing that it's > > also the most popular in the other four countries, even though languages > > other than English are spoken there. The reason for this situation is, of > > course, that there is little content in the Wikipedias in the languages > of > > these countries, and knowing what the most popular articles are can help > > people who write in these languages choose how to write that will be > > useful, and will hopefully raise the popularity of Wikipedias in these > > languages. The same is true for the most popular Russian Wikipedia > articles > > in Kyrgyzstan and Moldova, the most popular French Wikipedia articles in > > Benin and Mali, etc. This is only an idea, but maybe it will be > implemented > > some day. > > > > -- > > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי > > http://aharoni.wordpress.com > > “We're living in pieces, > > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore > > _______________________________________________ > > 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> -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ 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>
