WP should serve the readers, but it has to be written by the available
writers. We're dependent on volunteers from the people interested in
working on an encyclopedia like ours'. They'll have not just certain
interests, but certain abilities. This will vary with the different
encyclopedias , but at the enWP, there are very few people in most fields
who have the ability to write long comprehensive well--organized articles.
No matter how desirable it might be to have them, they arenotthee, and the
many education programs have brought in rather few regular partcipants.
On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 6:58 AM Jonathan Cardy <werespielchequers(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I am more active in categorisation on Commons than on
Wikipedia, and there
is a difference there as images in a very fine grained category may be the
specific images that one sees if they click on the commons category link in
a Wikipedia article.
But on both I see allocating more specific categories as part of the
workflow of many of our editors. Checking through entries in a high level
category, sifting out hoaxes and the like and moving the rest into more
appropriate categories.
I suspect what we really need is a better watchlisting system, one that
doesn't just give you options to ignore bot and minor edits but also to
ignore category edits and edits that are just reversions of IP and newbie
edits.
Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
________________________________
From: Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2018 11:43 pm
To: 'WereSpielChequers'; 'Research into Wikimedia content and
communities'
Subject: RE: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
I’m not suggesting categories are bad. I certainly don’t want
uncategorised articles. I also make use of hidden tracking categories to
manage groups of articles associated with various projects. But we do have
to recognise that it is editors that appear to make the most use of them.
Eye-tracking studies on desktop and I believe some instrumentation in
mobile viewing shows that readers don’t look at them (although I
acknowledge that they may indirectly benefit the reader through improved
search). I do outreach work (general talks about Wikipedia and edit
training) and I know from those interactions that our readers have mostly
never seen or used our categories, even many librarians (folks for whom
categorisation is part of their fundamental way of working) appear not to
have noticed our categories.
What I am objecting to is what I see on my watchlist every day, many
recategorisations into increasingly fine-grained categories. Also
Categories for Discussion Speedy seems to be a way to constantly fiddle
with the category tree (mostly just renaming) which then result in huge
numbers of edits to rename the categories in all the affected articles. If
you look at some of our top contributors, that’s what they do all day, yet
goodness knows how much time is spent by the rest of us reviewing these
very-low value edits on our watchlists. I would be very interested if
anyone had any studies on the cost/benefit of various types of edit (maybe
a job for ORES) against the benefit to the article (and hence the reader)
and the consumed time (by all parties) of that edit. For example, vandalism
would score strongly negative (damage to article content) but corresponding
removal of that vandalism would not score as strongly positive, because
it’s not a zero-sum game due to risk of exposure of the vandalism to the
reader before the revert and due to the reviewer cost (I review many
changed articles that have had an edit-revert sequence) and the window in
which the vandalism may have been ex, so even though the impact on the
content is net zero, the impact on everyone who reviews it needlessly is a
net negative for the project). All edits (good or bad) have a reviewer
cost. Do we know anything about reviewer costs of edits?
A couple of people have asked me about my mention of studies showing
people don’t look below the references. I was referring to a presentation
at Wikimania this year (URL to slides below). While the slides do not
explicitly mention categories, it shows readers rarely get to the bottom of
an article, where the categories lurk.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Which_parts_of_a_%28Wik…
I don’t know if there is more information available on the topic, but
hopefully as it was WMF Research, someone on this list may be able to point
us to more info.
Kerry
From: WereSpielChequers [mailto:werespielchequers@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, 17 December 2018 1:26 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
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
<mailto:kerry.raymond@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<mailto:zvandijk@gmail.com>]
Sent: Sunday, 16 December 2018 3:32 AM
To: Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com<mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com>>;
Research into Wikimedia content and communities <
wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailtolto:
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@gmail.com<mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com> <mailto:
kerry.raymond@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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