--
Piotr Konieczny
"The problem about Wikipedia is, that it just works in reality, not in
theory."
Milos Rancic wrote:
> (This is a forwarded email from foundation-l list.)
>
> After the third "experiment" on sr.wp, I have to say that cooperation
> between particular professors, their students and one of Wikimedia
> projects is working very well.
>
> The first project started with professors Cvetana Krstev and Dusko
> Vitas from Mathematical and Philological faculties in Belgrade. As I
> am not involved in that project (and I don't know for details), I will
> skip it. I only know that a number of students' works in computational
> linguistics were published on Serbian Wikipedia.
>
> The second was initiated by professor Slobdan Macura (a Wikipedian,
> too), who asked me to make a presentation of Wikipedia to students of
> the third and the fourth year of physical chemistry. This cooperation
> gave to us a number of very good articles about chemistry of proteins
> [1]. While half of them are translated from the English Wikipedia, the
> rest are original encyclopedic works made by students. For example, an
> article about Anfinsen's dogma is much better in Serbian [2] than in
> English [3].
>
> When I started to finish my studies in linguistics (last September), I
> found that some of my professors are interested in adapting their own
> rules to contribution to Wikipedia. The best cooperation I made with
> my professor in sociolinguistics, Jelena Filipovic. Her students have
> to make three types of works: three short forms, usually what a
> student thinks about something, one longer form on what student thinks
> about one of specific texts and a seminar work, which should be the
> longest form.
>
> (By accident, at the same time Linguistlist called linguists to
> contribute articles in sociolinguistics.)
>
> Professor's and mine first target was to change three short forms to
> three articles. Almost a half of the students (something less than 20
> of something more than 40) opted in to that change. And not only that:
> a couple of them opted to change their seminar work to one longer
> article.
>
> A week ago the first short forms were finished. Two students sent to
> me articles. Yesterday I started to analyze them in depth. And I have
> to say that articles are real success! I processed the first three
> articles and here is the report:
>
> - Dialect atlas (or "Linguistic map" -- two names for the same term).
> Article in Serbian [4] is much longer than article in English [5].
> - Linguistic interview. Article in Serbian exists [6], while article
> in English doesn't exist.
> - Language variable (a fairly important linguistic term) now exists in
> Serbian [7], but doesn't exist in English.
>
> The main consequence of such work is that we are able to move our sum
> of knowledge at the next level. While a number of smaller Wikipedias
> have problems with very basic articles, which may be covered by high
> school students, thanks to such cooperation we are able to put into
> Wikipedia more specific knowledge.
>
> * * *
>
> However, the situation is not sustainable. While I am able and I am
> willing to work with some number of professors, I am not able cover
> even my faculty alone. While initiating cooperation is a time
> consuming task, it is a temporary task. I am willing to spend a couple
> of weeks or a couple of months in making a cooperation alive, but when
> an initiation of cooperation is finished, I may start do work on other
> one.
>
> However, if I have to take care separately about all groups all the
> time, I would be able to work with five or ten groups, but not much
> more.
>
> Instead of that kind of organization, I think that it would be much
> better to make some kind of a global "academic network for Wikimedia".
> For the first time it should be one network for sharing resources: to
> explain how to find priorities for writing articles, to make some
> comprehensive manuals for professors and students, to show to
> professors and students how to find an online help as well as how to
> find real-life help.
>
> Also, such network may be very useful for professors and students:
> While at the first time such network would be able to connect a
> linguist from Serbia with a biologist from Germany (which is not so
> useful), as time is passing, this network would be able to make
> connections between people who are working on the same topics.
> Actually, if people from Linguistlist (those who already made calls
> for contributing to Wikipedia) are interested in joining to such
> network, we will already make the first connections between linguists.
>
> * * *
>
> I am not sure was here a similar talk. However, I know that Wikimedian
> community has a number of university professors and other experts. And
> those professors and experts should be the front persons of such
> network. Of course, I am willing to help, but we need to make a group
> of relevant people who would attract other professors and experts to
> join the group (and groups in the future).
>
> * * *
>
> There is one anecdote about Stalin. Some of the persons in charge for
> foreign relations came to him:
> - An emissary from Vatican came. What should we do?
> - How many tanks do they have?
> - None.
> - Take them away!
>
> So, whenever someone came with an idea to add some number of articles
> to Serbian Wikipedia, I was making jokes which were beginning with
> "How many tanks do thay have?" -- in the sense of a number of
> articles, of course.
>
> While it is obvious that 10 good articles are much better than 100
> bad, it is, also, obvious that we have to find a way how to make a
> "mass production" of good articles. When I say "mass production", I
> think about a systematic effort for improving quality of our project.
>
> And if there are three articles covered systematically by students on
> Serbian Wikipedia which are better than corresponding three articles
> on English Wikipedia (actually, two of them don't exist), then it is
> obvious that all Wikipedias need such systematic effort.
>
> I presented above my idea for making such systematic effort. It came
> to my mind yesterday, which means that it is far from a rounded idea.
> I didn't even thought about other possibilities. So, a question for
> discussion here is: Do you have some better idea? Does such thing
> exist? Do you think that this idea is good enough for implementation?
> If so, are there people (especially professors and experts) who are
> willing to participate?
>
> * * *
>
> [1] - The list of articles and students who made them is here:
>
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BB:%D0%A4%D0%...
> [2] -
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BD%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%B...
> [3] -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfinsen%27s_dogma
> [4] -
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijalektolo%C5%A1ki_atlas
> [5] -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_atlas
> [6] -
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intervju_(lingvistika)
> [7] -
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jezi%C4%8Dka_varijacija
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
--
Piotr Konieczny
"The problem about Wikipedia is, that it just works in reality, not in
theory."