Re: [Wiki-research-l] Generalizability of research across different language versions

Perhaps off-topic here, but when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail ... In the case of Wikipedia, we use templates and tracking categories as a poor man's solution to having any actual support for workflows and dashboards to manage processes. While phabricator is not great, it's still a step in the right direction. When I run large projects like our heritage register article rollout, I use spreadsheets held on Google Drive as it is easier to collaborate that way than on-wiki for a couple of really simple reasons: Wikipedia tables can't be manipulated like spreadsheets (e.g. queries like "which heritage entries are currently without an infobox photo and in the City of Sydney"). You can't store article drafts on Wikipedia in any name space because of the categories in them. Oh and we use email to collaborate on these projects because Talk is useless and frankly you don't need the peanut gallery looking on and wasting everyone's time. There are plenty of people who love to demand how others should implement a project despite having no intention to actually contribute to the work of the project. I think we should have some sort of rule on Wikipedia that you can't write more bytes on Talk pages than you've written in article content :-) So I think the small Wikipedias should be careful what they wish for when it comes to templates ... I got told off the other day for not having used the right presentation for an edit war report (I was a bystander not involved in a set of edit wars occurring across a large group of article). My reaction was "fine, I won't bother to report one again". Therein lie the dangers of using templates for business processes. Kerry -----Original Message----- From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Amir E. Aharoni Sent: Friday, 4 October 2019 12:23 AM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities &lt;wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Generalizability of research across different language versions Thanks a lot for bringing this up. Sorry for not offering a solution, but I do want to mention a frequently-missed aspect of the problem: Wikis in different languages have some differences that are understandable because they reflect some objective cultural characteristics of the people who speak it. But some differences are artificial and exit because in the early days of Wikimedia (mid-2000s) there were no convenient ways for wikis to communicate and share info. There were no global accounts and no convenient translation tools. Templates are still not global, even though there is huge demand for it,[1] and a lot of community process are implemented using templates: requests for deletion, requests for unblocking, article sorting for WikiProjects, stub sorting. Many of these things could be unified, at least partially, by making templates global, and among many benefits, it would make research easier, too. [1] It came at #3 in the Community Wishlist vote in 2015, and at #1 in 2016. Despite this demand, it was not implemented :( -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com ‪“We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬ ‫בתאריך יום ד׳, 2 באוק׳ 2019 ב-14:37 מאת ‪Jan Dittrich‬‏ <‪ jan.dittrich@wikimedia.de‬‏>:‬ _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l