On 6 April 2013 17:27, Denny Vrandečić <denny.vrande...@wikimedia.de> wrote:
> I fully agree with Robert and Phoebe in this matter. Wikidata is an option. > Requiring first to come up with rules on how to use Wikidata before it is > switched on simply won't work, because there is not sufficient interest and > experience for this discussion. > I'm very concerned that you would think that. In the real world, where attracting and retaining talented human beings is a key objective, testing of not-yet-ready-for-prime-time software (which this clearly is) is carried out in test environments and with teams who voluntarily agree to participate. The PDSA (plan-do-study-adjust) cycle is critically important; major changes are tested on smaller groups and constantly refined until they are ready to be applied effectively to the larger population. You still have a long, long way to go before this is ready for one of the biggest websites in the world. And it is entirely normal that processes are developed in advance. English Wikipedia has done so for many other technical changes that have taken place over time, including the addition of revision-deletion/suppression, the introduction of the Vector skin, the enabling of pending changes. In fact, I would go so far as to say that technical changes that have any significant effect on content or the manner in which members of the community carry out their responsibilities are *normally* discussed and planned for in advance. This software represents not only a major change in technology, but a major change in the philosophy of the project, and that by itself requires some very significant discussion. Please keep in mind that this is software that will affect every single editor of the project, not just a few who specialise in particular small niches. Someone pointed out that there was no community consultation about Scribunto/Lua, but that affects less than 1% of all active English Wikipedians (those who write templates), and many of them were either involved in the discussion or decided to stop working in the area. > > Or, put differently, the Wikidata proposal has been published nearly two > years ago. We have communicated on all channels for more than one year. I > can hardly think of any technical enhancement of Wikipedia - ever - which > was communicated as strongly beforehand as Wikidata. If, in that time, the > community has not managed to discuss the topic, it might be because such > changes only get discussed effectively after they occur. > "All channels" isn't really correct, although I can respect how difficult it is to try to find a way to communicate effectively with the English Wikipedia community. There is no centralized discussion point anywhere on the project. The technical village pump is almost completely populated by editors who have a strong interest in the technical side of things; others only drop in for a short period if they have a technical problem. Administrator noticeboards are watched by a larger percentage of the community, but discussions about changes like this would normally be moved off before any useful comment would be made. I do not recall ever reading about Wikidata on Wiki-en-L (the English Wikipedia mailing list), and only rarely on Wikimedia-L (mainly to invite people to meetings on IRC, but less than 5% of English Wikipedians use IRC). Indeed, almost everything I know about Wikidata comes from this mailing list (and much of what has been written is well beyond my comprehension. Nonetheless, I recognize that trying to find a way to effectively communicate with the English Wikipedia community is a major challenge even for those who are intimately familiar with the project, and would be doubly so for those who are not regular participants. > > I base this statement on having studied previous introductions of new > technical features to the Wikipedias (check for that my paper with Mathias > Schindler), like the category system or parserfunctions. > > Since Wikidata phase 2 is actually a less intrusive change than phase 1, > and based on the effectiveness of the discussion about phase 2 on the > English Wikipedia so far, I think that a post-deployment discussion is the > right way to go. > In what way is this less intrusive? Phase 1 changed the links to other projects beside articles, a task that was almost completely done by bots, and did not in any way affect the ability to edit or to modify the content of the articles. Phase 2 is intended to directly affect content and the manner in which it is edited. As well, phase 2 (dependent on implementation) requires that an editor go to a different website to modify the information on an article. There is no warning to the editor that they are leaving Wikipedia. And with the challenges that are about to happen with Firefox (the browser that is possibly the most commonly used by Wikipedians), we know that SUL is probably not going to work properly. Editors thinking they are logged in to English Wikipedia will find themselves on a strange site, not logged in, with a completely foreign editing interface. This is not the way to attract new editors, nor is it the way to keep existing ones. > > Also, a very important consideration is raised by Phoebe: Wikidata is in > its current form still in its infancy, and for a well developed project > like the English Wikipedia this means that the actual usage (and effect) is > expected to be minimal in the current stage. The deployment of phase 2 this > week would merely be a start for an organic co-evolution of Wikidata and > the Wikipedias in the months and years to come. > Yes, it's in its infancy. It needs to be put through its paces and problems identified and resolved. You already have a fairly significant number of projects willing to do that. Keep working with them. Why is there this insistence on putting software that is not ready for use onto projects that haven't indicated any interest in using immature software? > > But this can only happen 'in the wild', as a priori debates about the > possible usages of such features will remain not only too speculative, but > also highly undemocratic due to the minimal engagement of the community in > advance. > This is possibly the most disturbing thing I have ever read on a Wikimedia mailing list. You want to put software onto the most developed project in the entire Wikimedia community without any indication that the project is supportive of what it is intended to do, knowing that it is not actually ready for use at this point, knowing that its functions are directly in conflict with one of the project's known priorities of attracting new editors and retaining existing ones....and then you have the nerve to say that discussing how to use it would be "undemocratic"? The minimal engagement of the community in advance is the reason that deploying this software now is undemocratic. The workflow is counterintutive, and all of the examples provided to date have shown that this is not ready for release to an extremely large, highly active project; in fact, I question why it is being deployed any further right now to any projects outside of those that have clearly expressed an interest. You are doing the right thing by continuing to work with projects of various sizes that have voluntarily agreed to participate in the ongoing development of Wikidata. There are already several users from English Wikipedia who are active on Wikidata. We can encourage more users to participate there and on the test wikis where it is enabled, to actually test it and provide the feedback that you need to keep improving the product. As I've indicated very early in this thread, Phase 2 affects an area of English Wikipedia that is already under considerable dispute (i.e., infoboxes); requests for comment (RFCs) were already being drafted before this deployment was being announced. There is a pretty good chance that issues related to infoboxes will wind up being brought before the Arbitration Committee within the next few months. English Wikipedia is not the place to test this software now. That's what test wikis are for, and what voluntary project participation is for. Best, Risker _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
