Hoi,
I have some notions about language and if anything there are some things
that we can do technically but with over 280 languages technique will not
serve us well. At best it will be a partial solution. When you look at the
team of Amir, they are doing splendid work and I do salute their latest
effort where they now support collation for a language ahead of its support
in standards.
The problem with Wikipedia is that when we want to grow content in a small
language, we have to forget much of what English Wikipedia is, what the
bigger Wikipedias are and certainly not get stuck in academia. When we do
not have articles for their cities, important people when we largely do not
even know them in Wikidata, the first thing is for them to be bold and
write stubs, stubs that are connected. Stubs for their current affairs as I
described in my blog for lessons around newspapers and Wikipedia [1].
The point is that it is not about knowledge delivery. We do not have the
pertinent knowledge; it is first about knowledge acquisition. Sources may
be required for English Wikipedia but when you want to nurture a project in
its infancy, we do not need the overhead. It is detrimental to primary
requirements. Primacy is to be given to content in the first place,
interlinked content.
We have to appreciate what it is what we can achieve. For instance, the
Bangla Wikipedia has been the biggest resource in modern Bangla for a
number of years now. Bangla is spoken by a few hundred million people. This
can be achieved for many languages and we have to consider the state of a
language on the Internet and nurture the necessary effort.
We can leverage Wikidata for wiki links, red links and even black links.
This is the lowest hanging fruit for making Wikidata more relevant. I have
written about it before [2]. Including Wikidata in search results will make
search more robust [3]. Once we start making this connection between links
and Wikidata, it becomes easier to assess one aspect of quality because
articles on the same subject share similar links.
Anna, my point is that so far English Wikipedia has been given preferential
treatment and all the other projects have suffered as a consequence.
Another point is that we should not impose on the other projects with an
English Wikipedia vision. This is one aspect that is not acknowledged nor
understood by my peers as far as I am aware and, I know that my position is
not welcomed by most if at all.
Thanks,
GerardM
[1]
On 25 June 2017 at 22:33, Anna Stillwell <astillwell(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Gerard,
Happy Sunday to you. I hope you're well.
I'm curious... have you heard one of the ideas emerging in discussions is
"beyond the encyclopedia"... an idea that includes and goes beyond the
encyclopedia? You'd likely resonate with the idea. It describes the
multiplicity of what we already are and the desire to grow that.
Additionally, we are hearing from "New Voices" that we can't expect to
deliver knowledge the same way everywhere. Clearly, we are going to have to
mix it up. You might enjoy some of the insights coming out of New Voices.
They are published on the meta page as soon as each event ends and as
quickly as they can coherently write it up.
There has also been a good deal of discussion around language (and the
subsequent technical need to explore machine learning for predictive,
contextual search and natural language processing to support better
translation).
Most of the ideas I've mentioned here are housed under "Truly global
movement" | "Community health" | or "Augmented age". Augmented
age is a
technical vision which increasingly seems like the technical means to
support some other end(s).
You might be surprised where the discussions are going. It's built by your
peers. We offered the resources and structure and we realize that there are
constraints and biases that come with that. We've tried to account for our
biases (the foundation's and the movement's) with entire streams of work:
New voices, for example. That was intentional in the design.
I've responded here to let you know that you are not alone. Your peers have
voiced these issues and they are heavily influencing the discussion and
everyone is listening.
Warmly,
/a
On Sat, Jun 24, 2017 at 10:59 AM, Gerard Meijssen <
gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com
wrote:
Hoi,
The one serious flaw of the current practice is that English Wikipedia
receives more attention than it deserves based on its merits[1]. This
bias
can be found in any and all areas. There is for
instance a huge
educational
effort going on for English and there is no
strategy known, developed,
tried to use education to grow a Wikipedia from nothing to 100.000
articles.. the number considered to be necessary by some to have a viable
Wikipedia. When you consider research it is English Wikipedia because
otherwise it will not get published [2].
A less serious flaw is that the WMF is an indifferent custodian of
projects
other than Wikipedia. When it provides no service
to Wikipedia like
Wikisource, its intrinsic value is not realised to the potential readers
that are made available. There is no staff dedicated to these projects
and
there is no research into its value.
The angst for the community means that there is hardly any collaboration
between the different Wikipedias. Mostly the "solutions" of English
Wikipedia are imposed. There are a few well trodden paths that habitually
get attention. When it comes to diversity, the gender gap is well served
but the global south is not. A lot of weight is given to a data driven
approach but there is hardly enough data relevant to the global south in
English Wikipedia to make such an approach viable.
Yes, I have tried to get some attention for these issues in the process
so
far but <grin> as bringer of the bad news I
am happy that it is the
message
and not the messenger who is killed
</grin>.
Please tell me I am wrong and proof it by using more than opinions.
Thanks,
GerardM
[1] less than 30% of the world populace and less than 50% of the WMF
traffic.
[2] comment by a professor whose university does a lot of studies on
Wikipedia..
On 24 June 2017 at 12:33, Yaroslav Blanter <ymbalt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jun 24, 2017 at 10:32 AM, Strainu
<strainu10(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> 2017-06-23 23:48 GMT+03:00 Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com>om>:
> > Could you elaborate on the benefits of this timetable change for
people
> > who
> > > are not involved with affiliates?
> >
> >
> >
> > Starting from this assumption, and considering the fact that even the
> > most active wikimedians (not involved in a chapter) have real life
> > commitments that do not allow them to follow this process carefully,
> > it is obvious that the main responsibility of the team that
> > coordinates the process should have been outreach. In my particular
> > geographic area, Track B contributors were engaged with only 2 weeks
> > prior to the end of the last cycle, which is hardly enough time to
> > read, understand, and think about the vast quantity of material
> > available in the strategy process.
> >
> >
> > I am an active Wikimedia not involved in a Chapter. In Round 1, I was
> pretty active, and in the Russian Wikivoyage we collected quite some
> feedback and translated it into English. It was essentially ignored.
None
of us
participated in Round 2 since we thought it is a waste of time.
Round
> 2 was organized in the same way as Round 1 (many discussions opened i n
> different places, meaning there is no possibility to really discuss
> anything, merely to leave one's opinion). I have corresponding pages
on
3
projects
on my watchlists (with is 15 pages, and this is a lot), but I
have
not seen in these discussions anything new not
said before in Round 1.
May
> be smth useful would come out from other tracks, but I am not really
> looking forward to Track B Round 3 either. I believe it is completely
> failed, and individual contributors did not have a chance to form a
> considated opinion. The message for me is essentially: If you want to
be
heard,
find a chapter or a thematic organization first. I hope the next
process will be organized differently in 10 years from now.
Cheers
Yaroslav
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