Hello,
to follow up on that troll, I invite you to (re-)discover the work by Marwell and Oliver
"The Critical Mass in Collective Action" (1993)
http://books.google.fr/books/about/The_Critical_Mass_in_Collective_Action.html?id=14nA7_k05NsC&redir_esc=y
which points that fact that after some times, project are "mature" and need less people to participate. Maybe Wikipedia has entered in adulthood (which is, sometime, boring)
Nicolas
Le 28/10/2014 16:14, Pierre-Carl Langlais a écrit :
Hi everyone,
I cannot resist the temptation to troll a bit on this thread:
*"we need 10K or even 100K new active editors": would it not result in
even higher levels of bureaucracy? Internet technologies have certainly
allowed to keeps large community running with fuzzy rules. Yet, I'm not
so sure it has completely relieved us of bureaucracy: there's probably
still a maximal ratio of participants/fuzziness. With about 30,000
active contributors during the past month, the English Wikipedia is by
far one of the largest autonomous web community. By experience (I do not
have any statistics at hand, sorry), I know that smaller communities
like the Italian Wikipedia, Wikidata or OpenStreetMap (all around
2,000-5,000 contributors) manage to avoid the same level of bureaucracy
sophistication. A lot of agreements can be done on a case per case
basis, while with 10 times more contributors regular rules become
necessary to avoid repeating the same discussions constantly. If you
want to keep a community of 130,000 users consistent, I guess you would
have to set up some kind of kafkaïan nightmare that would make the
current english wikipedia looks like a libertarian paradise…
*"English Wikipedia is suffering from a lack of adaptive flexibility". I
would rather point a lack of communication between the community and the
WMF. I have made some wiki archeology to document my last paper
<http://www.cairn.info/resume.php?ID_ARTICLE=NEG_021_0021> on Wikipedia
politics, and what strikes me in the 2001-2007 period is the high level
of interaction between programmers and contributors. A lot of important
features (like footnotes) were first suggested by users who do not have
any kind of programming knowledge. We clearly need to reestablish this
link (perhaps launching a wishlist would be a first step…).
*Is Wikipedia decline an exception? It seems to me that all communities
tends to attain a maxima, after which they slowly regress and stagnate.
The growth of OpenStreetMap has for instance slowed down
<http://scoms.hypotheses.org/241> after 2012. This is not because these
communities cease to be cool (a case could be made that OpenStreetMap is
way cooler than Wikipedia), but mainly, because having free time (in
addition of motivation and ability to contribute on the web) is still a
rare resource. Beginning a demanding job, having a child: all these
current events of life strongly limits the level of implication within
the population that would likely participate. Free time would certainly
not account of the whole gender gap, but is still a bigger issue for
women than for men: in a society that has not completely given up
patriarchal cultural schemes, women are still required to do a lot of
home-related tasks. On the French Wikipedia, we have long focused on
enhancing contribution from the inside (through a very active project
<https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Aide_et_accueil> to greet
newcomers) with little results (at most, we have only slowed down an
inevitable decline). Apparently, the most efficient (but hardest) way to
enhance participation would be to make some global change on society
(reforming evaluation rules for researchers, reducing working time,
creating a basic income, you name it…).
That's all, folks
PCL
Le 28/10/14 14:27, Aaron Halfaker a écrit :
Hey folks,
I'm breaking this thread of discussion out since it's not really
relevant to the thread it appeared in.
Personally, I'm not studying Wikipedia. I'm studying the nature of
socio-technical communities with Wikipedia as an interesting case
study. Wikidata might be an interesting case study for something, but
personally, I'm mostly interested in how mature communities/systems
work & break down. When it reaches maturity, I hope that Wikidata
will benefit from what I have learned.
-Aaron
On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 8:01 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@gmail.com <mailto:gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hoi,
I agree when it is the only thing I said.
Yes, I asked you personally and Toby ... and Erik (both of them
and several times) and I always hear "good idea, should be easy,
we ill look into it and we get back to you". But as I said, your
reply is relevant when it is the only thing I said and it is not.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 28 October 2014 13:43, Aaron Halfaker <aaron.halfaker@gmail.com
<mailto:aaron.halfaker@gmail.com>> wrote:
Gerard. Did you file the feature request? If not, you are
ranting at the wrong mailing list.
On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 3:20 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@gmail.com <mailto:gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>><okeyes@wikimedia.org <mailto:okeyes@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
wrote:
Hoi,
Despair is a personal emotion. What makes you think that
despair is an attack on a person? It is not. Oliver, I
despair about what the Research list has become and, I
will explain why.
What I despair about is the overwhelming amount of
Wikipedia related noise. Noise because it feels to me like
the same subjects are covered in endless similar ways. I
despair because when something new happens OUTSIDE of
this, the English Wikipedia it is completely ignored.
Much of what I hear feels like noise because it lacks
practical relevance. Research, statistics could show "What
are people looking for most in Wikipedia but cannot find".
We do not have that because of no reason I can think of
and, it has been promised often enough for years now. The
Swedish Wikipedia finds that their bot generated articles
has rejuvenated their Wikipedia but the research community
is quiet about it.. Ignores it ? Wikidata has statistics
[1] its data has a real meaning about Wikipedia, about
Wikidata and about the sum of all information AVAILABLE to
us.
The consequence of all this self promotion is that there
is no attention for anything else.. Yes, we know there is
a gender disparity but what about people with a mental
health problem.. We have way more people editing who are
"enriched" with a diagnosis than is average. What do our
projects mean for them, does it help them with their self
awareness, does it help them recover, is our community
aware of it and how does it cope or fail to cope. What
practical steps can we take to make these valuable
contributors more secure, less anxious?
Researching the same things over and over does not help us
understand WIkipedia, our "other projects", our
communities. It does not help us achieve our aim; it is
"share in the sum of all knowledge", we do not even share
all the knowledge that is available to us. Why not? How
can we do this?
Jane knows the tool that provides a selection of
Wikipedias with search results from Wikidata. It works,
Ori looked at it from a performance point of view. NOTHING
NEEDS TO BE DONE TO IMPLEMENT IT. It does not happen. A
research question would be "Why".
The statistics for Wikidata are not up to date because the
dumps are faulty. It is not clear, obvious that it is of
real concern to the people responisble. However this data
IS used to run specific bots based on what the numbers
show. The numbers matter, the statistics matter they have
a real demonstrable impact.
What I am looking for is relevance and I find only
research for more fine grained explanations not for
solutions. It is why I despair, it is because it feels so
much like a colossal waste of time when you consider that
researching subjects with a different objective would help
us forward so much.
Maybe my expectations are unrealistic and people doing
research are just another incrowd doing their own thing.
Thanks,
GerardM
[1] https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/stats.php?reverse
On 28 October 2014 00:15, Oliver Keyes
If it's that trivial to implement, implement it.
That's a very compressed way of saying; I think it's
fine for us to disagree on this list. But, really?
Pine's email made you "despair"? It, by inference,
made you conclude he doesn't accept new things? You
find the absence of a feature actively irrational?
It's okay for Pine's vision to be different from
yours, or mine, or Aaron's, or anyone else's.
Wikimedia's ethos is not built on any one person's
vision: it is built on the sum of all of our hopes (in
an ideal universe). It's not a one-in, one-out system
where ideas must be harshly and actively countered so
that yours can take primacy.
So let's try and stay non-hyperbolic and civil on this
list, please. As a heuristic; if even /you/ feel a
need to write an apology for your email into an email,
don't hit send.
On 27 October 2014 17:14, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
<mailto:gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hoi,
I read your mail again. It makes me despair.
Wikimedia research is NOT about Wikipedia, not
exclusively. When I read what is an inspiration to
you I find all the reasons why Wikipedians do not
accept anything new. Why we still do not have a
search that also returns information on what is
NOT in that particular Wikipedia. It is only one
example out of many. It is however so easy to
implement, it defies logic that it has not
happened on all Wikipedias. It is just one example
that demonstrates that we do not even share the
sum of all information that is available to us.
...
Sorry,
GerardM
On 20 October 2014 08:23, Pine W
<wiki.pine@gmail.com <mailto:wiki.pine@gmail.com>><http://youtube.com/watch?v=-We4GZbH3Iw>
wrote:
Both of the presentations at the October
Wikimedia Research Showcase were fascinating
and I encourage everyone to watch them [1]. I
would like to continue to discuss the themes
from the showcase about Wikipedia's
adaptability, viability, and diversity.
Aaron's discussion about Wikipedia's ongoing
internal adaptations, and the slowing of those
adaptations, reminded me of this statement
from MIT Technology Review in 2013 (and I
recommend reading the whole article [2]):
"The main source of those problems (with
Wikipedia) is not mysterious. The loose
collective running the site today, estimated
to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing
bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere
that deters newcomers who might increase
partipcipation in Wikipedia and broaden its
coverage."
I would like to contrast that vision of
Wikipedia with the vision presented by
User:CatherineMunro (formatting tweaks by me),
which I re-read when I need encouragement:
"THIS IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA
One gateway
to the wide garden of knowledge,
where lies
The deep rock of our past,
in which we must delve
The well of our future,
The clear water
we must leave untainted
for those who come after us,
The fertile earth,
in which truth may grow
in bright places,
tended by many hands,
And the broad fall of sunshine,
warming our first steps
toward knowing
how much we do not know."
How can we align ouselves less with the former
vision and more with the latter? [3]
I hope that we can continue to discuss these
themes on the Research mailing list. Please
contribute your thoughts and questions there.
Regards,
Pine
[1] youtube.com/watch?v=-We4GZbH3Iw
[2]
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/
[3] Lest this at first seem to be impossible,
I will borrow and tweak a quote from from
George Bernard Shaw and later used by John F.
Kennedy: "Some people see things as they are
and say, 'Why?' Let us dream things that never
were and say, 'Why not?'"
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In charge of the Master "Information Systems Project Management and Consulting"
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