On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 at 22:35, Yaroslav Blanter <[email protected]> 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 criticize 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 crucial, and Wikipedia is still a useful and sustainable > project. Wikipedia clearly has its ecosystem, there are no competitors to > talk about, and all attempts to fork it were unsuccessful. There is a > steady development, and everybody is happy. > > Does this mean that everything is fine and we do not need to worry?, just > to wait until missing articles get written, or even to help this by writing > them ourselves? > > Absolutely not. To understand this, we can look again at the editor base. > There are detailed studies, but, for a starter, it is a nightmare to edit > Wikipedia from a cell phone. It is possible but not much easier to edit it > from a tablet. The mobile version is different from a desktop one, and it > is not really optimized for editing. This is a known problem, but one > aspect of it is clear. Most Wikipedia editors actually own a desktop and a > laptop. This brings them into 18+ category. There are of course exceptions, > but the fact is that the editor base gets older, and this is a problem. The > problem is not so much at this point that we all die and there will be > nobody to edit Wikipedia. The problem is that the next generation (18-) has > very different ways of getting information. And I guess they are not > interested in editing Wikipedia, and they will not get interested when they > grow up - possibly beyond introducing minor corrections, which can be done > from a phone. > > Traditionally, students were always among the core of the editors base. > They already have some knowledge and they still have time to edit. When > they graduate, find a job and start a family, they have way less time and > typically stop editing. The next group are retirees. Between students and > retirees, we have a tiny fraction of dedicated enthusiasts who are ready to > take time from work and family, but they are really not numerous. Well, and > very soon we are going to lose students as editors. And we should be happy > if we do not lose them as readers. > > 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 to > be video clips. Short clips. Or, at lest, they must contain clips, with more > voice and less letters. If one needs more detailed information or just > further information - one hops to the next article or watches the next > clip. > > This is a paradigm shift. Currently, the editors generally consider that it > is good to have long Wikipedia articles - because long means more complete. > Sometimes there are even proposals (fortunately isolated and without > follow up) to delete all short articles even if they describe notable topics > and contain verified information. Clips are almost not in use. Of course > they still need to be made, but this is not such a big problem - there are > plenty of school students who have their own you tube channel, if they can > make clips, everybody can. > > The most difficult question is how this can be realized. I believe it is > not possible to just transform Wikipedia like this - make articles shorter > and simpler and spit them. First, this might be good for the young > generation, but this is still not good for the 18+ generation. Second, such > reforms should be either be approved by Wikipedia community through > consensus, or be imposed by the Wikimedia Foundation who owns the project. > The likelihood of either is zero. Just to give one argument, the community > is, well, the community of editors, of the same 18+ people with laptops who > have no difficulties reading long texts. > > I envision it differently. Ideally, we have the Wikipedia as it is now, but > on top of this, every article has a collection of shorter companion > articles, simple and a paragraph or two long, so that each of them can be > read in half a minute, They should not have excessive markup, references, > categories or anything else which can be found in the main article if > needed. References in Wikipedia are required not for the sake of having > references, but as a means to ensure that the information is verifiable - > and if the main article does it the companion articles do not need to. Some > of these companion articles can be in fact clips - there is a difficulty > that clips can not be edited collaboratively, but I am sure this one can be > solved. If anybody wants to solve it. > > The status of what I have written above is science fiction. I am sure if I > come with this proposal to a village pump of Wikipedia, it will be dead > within a day. In addition, it requires some modifications of Media Wiki > which can only be done by the Foundation. And I am not really looking > forward for the Foundation implementing this either. I have a lot of > respect for some of the Foundation employees, but it has now grown up into > a big corporation now and behaves as a big corporation, where some people > care less about the product and more about other things, and some look at > Wikipedia editors, aka "unorganized volunteers", as some annoying > phenomenon, which they can tolerate but are not willing to listen to. My > forecast is pretty pessimistic. Unless a miracle happens (and I currently, > at least not from my perspective, do not see any reasons for a miracle to > happen), soon or late will realize this, It might be a startup company, or > a non-commercial. And Wikipedia will stay as it is, and, after the > standards change many times, it will not be readable / accessible to most > of Internet users, and will slowly die. And the results of what were were > doing for 20 years will disappear. This is a usual development and happens > to almost every human activity. We know that only a few percents of pieces > of Ancient Greek and Roman literature survived until now. > > Yaroslav Blanter , editor and administrator of the English Wikipedia, 125 > 000 edits.
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