I've long seen categorisation on wikipedia as a way to bring articles to
the attention of those who follow certain categories. During the cleanup of
unreferenced biographies a few year ago this was a useful adjunct, with
several wikiprojects cleaning up all the articles legitimately categorised
for them. Some of the other Wikiprojects did at least go through and prod
or speedy the non-notables and hoaxes in their areas.
I'm pretty sure it still operates that way, categorisation of an
uncategorised article sometimes brings it to the attention of people who
know the topic.
And of course where the article doesn't contain the words in the category,
categorisation then improves search.
If like me you are a glass third full person categories make a useful
contribution.
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 at 22:21, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Pointy? I think you may misunderstand my use of the
term “hostage”. I
don’t use it with the meaning of abducting people for ransom, but in the
sense of “subject to things beyond our control”.
I agree entirely that Wikipedia should serve its readers and to that end
“To do” lists are compiled with the intention of giving adequate coverage
of topics perceived to be needed. Yet, many of those “To do” lists are full
of redlinks years later because we have volunteer contributors whose
interests / expertise may not align with the perceived needs. Whereas if
Wikipedia employed its writers, it could direct them to write articles
about required topics. It would be a wonderful thing if we could harness
the volunteer energy that goes into largely unproductive activities like
endless category reorganisation (given studies show readers rarely look
below the reference section and don’t see or use the categories) into
writing content that is actually needed. But alas it is not so.
Kerry
From: Ziko van Dijk [mailto:zvandijk@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, 16 December 2018 3:32 AM
To: Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com>om>; Research into Wikimedia
content and communities <wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
Hello,
Thanks for the link and the comments, Leila!
Am Fr., 14. Dez. 2018 um 00:44 Uhr schrieb Kerry Raymond <
kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com <mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com> >:
hostage to the interests of their contributors (unless they actively
remove the material). That is, you get the topics that the contributors are
willing and able to write, no matter what the intention might be.
That's a very pointy expression: "Hostage to the interests of their
contributors"! In fact, WP should serve recipients, but the reality is
often different. We alreday saw that Article Feedback Tool as a means to
find out what recipients think. I would be happy with a new, less ambitious
approach, where we don't expect recipients to contribute to the improvement
of content but just want to know their opinion.
By the way, the distincion of large and short articles I have found in
Collison's "Encyclopedias through the ages" (or similar) from 1966. It is
not very prominent in there, but I have elaborated on the idea in 2015,
with a distinction of definition articles, exposition articles, longer
articles and dissertations.
An encyclopedia with "short" articles - or a meaningful combination of the
four types above - would fit well to the original concept of hypertext not
being an actual set of texts (or nodes), but being an individual's specific
learning strategy or reading path.
Federico: remember, most of the oldest German texts (Old High German) deal
with Biblical topics... :-)
Kind regards
Ziko
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