On 9 April 2013 12:15, Denny Vrandečić <denny.vrande...@wikimedia.de> wrote:
> Risker, > > I find myself unconvinced by your argumentation as I perceive it as > inconsistent. > > On the one hand, you suggest that before we enable the option to access > data from Wikidata using either Lua or a parser function should be > discussed and decided by the community beforehand - the same community, > that has been informed since mid 2011 that this change is coming. You > suppose that the community can actually come together and decide this > globally. > > On the other hand, you are not trusting the community with the use of the > same feature. You say they would "weaponize" the feature, that the > community will be unable to adapt to the new feature, and that it needs to > discuss first how to use it, and for deployment to wait a few months (I do > not fully understand why you assume that a few months will be enough to > sort things out). You seem to assume that a wiki as large and active as the > English Wikipedia is not resilient enough to absorb the rather minor > technical change we are introducing. > > It is, technically, a minor change. Socially it can lead to bigger changes > -- but I found it hard to believe that anyone can predict the actual effect > on the English Wikipedia community. This has to be seen and experienced, > and I, for one, trust the English Wikipedia community to be as awesome as > always, and to absorb and use this new features in ways no one has even > imagined yet. > I'll just quickly point out the dichotomy in what you're saying here: first you say that you doubt the project can come together and make a global decision, and then you say that it is resilient enough to ... make a global decision. This is, from the technical perspective, a small change. It is a major philosophical change: actively preventing editors from making content changes on the home project. It's also a contradictory change: it makes it more complex to edit content, but at the same time major investment of developer time and talent is being invested into making the editing process simpler and more intuitive through Visual Editor (and ultimately projects like Flow and Echo). Infoboxes (and ultimately lists) are an integral part of the content of Wikipedias; making text easier to edit and other integral content more difficult to edit suggests that, at minimum, there are some fairly significant philosophical and practical conflicts within the overall platform development. From the community perspective, a simpler editing interface has been a community priority for almost as long as Wikipedia has been in existence. It is good to see the WMF putting its (much improved) financial resources into a project that has been near the top of the editorial wish list for so long, and that investment has very good prospects of paying off with both editor retention and editor recruitment. Unless I've missed something, that's still a key metric for measuring success. I agree that Wikidata is "cool" (to use others' expressions), but I've not seen anything indicating it is attracting new editors; instead it seems to be drawing in editors from other WMF projects, who are now doing less editing in their "home" projects. I'd hope that is a short-term change as Wikidata develops as a project. I suppose what I am saying here is that Wikidata doesn't seem to be working within the articulated "master vision" of the platform (which focuses on simplifying the editorial process), and absent the ability to edit the wikidata on the project where it appears, I don't see how it's going to get there. It doesn't make Wikidata any less of a great idea, and I still think it has potential for new projects to build content. I'm just having a hard time seeing where it's fitting with everything else that is going on, if data can't be changed by using "real words" directly on the wikipedia project. What I am looking for is a good, plain-English explanation of how these two different directions in software development are not divergent, and how they are intended to co-exist without one adversely affecting the effectiveness of the other. > Since you are saying that our communication has not been sufficient, I > would be very glad to hear which channels we have missed so that we can add > them in the future. > > > > > 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. > > > > It is less intrusive on in the sense that simply nothing happens until an > editor consciously decides to do something, i.e. use the new functionality. > Ah, I see. This may be different for less mature or smaller wikis, but editors on English Wikipedia paid almost no attention to interwiki links; it was something bots (or a tiny number of editors) did, and was just another one of those contentless edits that made an article pop back up in their watchlist. It did nothing to affect the editing process of the article, and any random passerby could still edit every aspect of the content, so wikidata taking over that task is not perceived as intrusive. Phase 2 affects the ability to edit the content of the article, the moment it is applied by one editor, and it can only be returned to its "natural" editing state by an experienced editor who will know how to revert the infobox back to its old format if desired. And yes, from the perspective of editors, infoboxes are part of the content of the article. The technology change may be minor, but its use means changing the core "anyone can edit" philosophy that has created, and constantly renewed and developed, the wikipedia projects. > > You seem to assume that the eleven Wikipedias currently using Wikidata > phase 2 have asked us for a deployment. This was not the case (besides on > Hungarian). They were informed that they would be the first Wikipedias to > experience the roll out. This lead to several conversations, just as on the > English Wikipedia as well. > You are correct, I had made that assumption. I remembered reading about the discussions on hewiki, and that huwiki had clearly expressed interest, and assumed that this was a consensual decision on the part of all involved wikipedias. Thank you for correcting me. > > > I am sorry to have disturbed you so deeply, but I remain with my statement: > based on the small engagement in this discussion, compared to the size of > the English Wikipedia community, I regard this discussion as undemocratic, > i.e. not representative of the editor body as a whole. > > Do not misunderstand me: I am not claiming that the decision to switch on > Wikidata has been democratic, or actually indeed that technical decisions > in the Wikimedia Movement are in general achieved through democratic > processes. I am merely noticing that I do not consider the current > discussion to be any more democratic than that - I do not think that the > community is represented here any better (or worse) than in the many > channels we have used for communication before. > As I have explained to Danny more personally, this appears to have been a miscommunication by word selection. In common English usage, the term "undemocratic" is a charged political term associated with dictators and the revocation of rights like the right to liberty or the right to free speech. On off-line discussion, as well as in reading Denny's further comments here, it became apparent that he meant "not democratic". I entirely agree that software deployment is not democratic, on WMF or any other projects, nor would I expect it to be. I apologize to Denny for my being too much of a word wonk, and perhaps spending too much time reading political history. 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