Gerard Meijssen, 20/11/2015 08:18: And some wikipedians say the same of Wikidata. So "quality" in such discussions is just a red herring used to raise matters of control (i.e. power and social structure). Replace "quality" with "the way I do things" in all said discussions and suddenly things will make more sense. The first step to improve the situation, imho, is to banish the word "quality". Nemo _______________________________________________ Wikidata mailing list Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata

On 20.11.2015 09:18, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote: +1 to this accurate analysis What we need to overcome this is more mutual trust, and more personal overlaps between communities. There are already some remarkable projects where the boundary between "Wikipedian" and "Wikidatista" (or what's our demonym now?) has vanished. I think these will naturally grow and prosper as Wikidata becomes better and better (bigger, more reliable, more usable, etc.), but it will take some patience and we should not expect Wikipedia veterans to change their processes overnight to accommodate Wikidata. I think the right strategy is to do this grass-roots style, not by expecting big policy changes, but by showing the gain of Wikidata to individual domains one by one. Markus _______________________________________________ Wikidata mailing list Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata

On 21.11.2015 12:21, Jane Darnell wrote: Yes, one can also understand the point of view of many seasoned Wikipedians. Because of the popularity of the platform, large parts of their daily work consist in defending "their" content against all kinds of absurd ideas and changes for the worse. Rather than writing new, better content, their main work is in rejecting content that is worse. They therefore are spending a lot of time on talk pages, having debates with people whom most of us would simply ignore on the Internet, but which they cannot ignore if they want to protect what has been achieved already. Doing this is hard work, since Wikipedia rejects the notion of personal standing or seniority as a basis for "trusting" someone to be right -- every puny battle of opinions has to be fought out on the talk page. The only thing to allude to is some abstract notion of "quality" -- and a complex system of policies and processes. This tough work hardens people and gives them a negative bias towards change, especially towards process changes that might lead to reduced control. They worry (not unreasonably!) that Wikidata does not have this community of gate keepers that can fend off the irrational and the misguided. They also worry that they themselves may not have enough time to take on this task, watching yet another site in addition to what they already do in their Wikipedias. Conversely, people on Wikidata are (not unreasonably!) frustrated when being met with the same distrust as the average Internet freak that Wikipedians are fighting off on a daily basis, rather than being accepted as members of the Wikimedia community who are working towards the same goal. Considering all this, it is amazing what has been achieved already :-) Markus _______________________________________________ Wikidata mailing list Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata

Jane & all, On Sat, Nov 21, 2015 at 5:21 AM, Jane Darnell &lt;jane023(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: ​That probably is not the best wording to win some hearts and minds, while working towards mutual goals. ​ ​This is better, your saying everyone's input is worthwhile and valuable. ​ Careful, you seem to allude that they are incapable of understanding. Not the ideal choice of words. :) ​ Please generate less animosity towards others by using thoughtful word choices. (In essence, there are no others...instead we are one whole family. Humans.) Use helpful unbiased communication and collaboration with one another. Thanks. ​ Thad +ThadGuidry <https://www.google.com/+ThadGuidry>​ _______________________________________________ Wikidata mailing list Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata