Hi,
I absolutely agree with the idea of finding some way to know what is more popular / wanted by readers. And if we identify with it/want to invest some time in it / whatever, then we can have a good criteria to follow about what to create first, or invest more in.
I have created myself a number of high-demand pop articles with which I do not identify at all, as k-pop start Suga - https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suga and late rapper Lil Peep https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lil_Peep , because I understood that a lot of people was searching information about them, and it would be a win-win for everyone if they would find reliable information in Wikipedia, and possibly act as an anchor for those readers to better now and join our projects.
I have also done exactly the same with one of the most vandalized and used in vandalism terms in Portuguese, an horrible swearing word, turning that not only into an encyclopedic article, but into a featured article: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caralho . A lot of people was absolutely shocked by the amount of time apparently "lost" into collecting such stuff and building it into a proper article, but I see that as an investment: Turning something apparently hideous into a magnet for History, Medieval Literature and Folk Culture. The result is that, as you can see, the article is not even protected. I believe that kids and vandals find it so educative (that is: boring) they simply turn away. Or they keep reading, and actually learn something useful. :)
Other experiments I've been doing is writing, following and developing news-like articles about current events, with high popular demand ATM, such as shipwrecks, earthquakes and fires, and monitor their visibility and the way they drive new people into the projects.
Finally, I would like to point the interesting case of encyclopedic article on Brazilian pastry papo-de-anjo - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papo-de-anjo , which was created by encyclopedic academic "most highly cited computer scientist in Brazil" Jorge Stolfi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Stolfi
Why is Stolfi editing about cakes and Brazilian pastry instead of computer science? Because he feels like it. Would you go to Solfi and say he should be writing about computer science, instead of pastry, he would probably leave and you end up with no computer science and no pastry. Why sometimes I create pop articles instead of concentrating in more "encyclopedic" stuff? Because this is supposed to be fun, and also a way to learn new stuff. I do not identify at all with k-pop and rappers, but I found it funny to write about them, and a way to learn about something that is absolutely exotic to me. And still write a lot about Literature, History and Science. But when people come to me saying that I'm loosing my time writing about those pop subjects, and that I should write about this and that, what I answer is: If you believe someone should write about that, then YOU should write, not came asking others to do your stuff.
Please, bring on that popularity study, I'm certainly very interested in it.
Best, Paulo - DarwIn Wikimedia Portugal
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com escreveu no dia terça, 12/03/2019 à(s) 08:26:
Hoi, The point is EXACTLY that this list will be different per language. What there is, what is needed differs as a consequence. What specific Wikipedias covers is as different.
There are multiple objectives to be gained:
- as we gain more articles, we will gain a bigger presence for a
Wikipedia in Google
- a bigger presence will give us more eye balls.
- more people who edit a Wikipedia means that any and all subjects of
their choosing become better covered
When we choose for an approach like this, it is very much in the true Wiki spirit. When the argument is about "supervision", the question is how that would work. In my opinion, you are likely not to know the other language and Google translate is unlikely to function for all the 280+ languages.
The point of this approach is very much that there is no solution for all of Wikipedia.. It is weird to suggest that would work in the first place. Thanks, GerardM
On Mon, 11 Mar 2019 at 14:08, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Reminding is easy, it's analyzing that it's complex.
I suspect that editors and readers are probably a little bit smarter than generally assumed. It's quite "obvious" that editors understand what is
an
encyclopedia, after years. When I make an informal survey, statistically the "smarter" students in the class or in the group of people in front of me at an event are those who already edited something or who want to know more or are willing to compile a form to state their opinion or similar.
Plus, every topic is multifaceted somehow, it's the same for the most popular ones. It's strange when long-time editors seem to miss this
aspect.
There is always a specific disease, an historical event, a place or a person in a family history linked to a most searched topic. You can
detect
many missing specific things just focusing on a core topic and starting from there. Again, maybe it's worth reminding also how our editors are quite good at doing this, and this type of information is therefore a starting point. In some of this comments, it always look like an end per se.
Seriously, if someone is so superficial to just edit something with no depth because it's on a list, (s)he will just do something equally superficial somewhere else. Clinically, I might state that it's probably
a
good thing if this occur in an area with huge focus, it actually lowers
the
possible long-term disfunctionalities induced by a rigid approach, something that it's more subtle to detect in less supervised areas.
in any case, these lists can change a lot from area to area so it is not even driven by the "mass", if you give a country in South America or Asia the same focus on a western country you end up with very unusual
guideline.
it's nice to know that you expertise in an area even if less taken into account in the average community around you, it's useful in a different part of the word.
Il lunedì 11 marzo 2019, 13:32:12 CET, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> ha scritto:
The idea of a popularity-driven encyclopaedia scares 😱
I agree, although I'd make it a bit more focused: an encyclopedia that is *only* popularity-driven is indeed scary. It's good to mention this, and not once, but repeatedly.
However, providing Wikipedia editors with information about what *is* in demand is useful, as long as the editors clearly know that they have the choice to write what is *important* and that "important" is not equal to "popular".
While I haven't ran a proper survey about this, conversations that with Wikipedia editors from various "big" and "small" languages tell me that most of them already understand it, and this is good. Nevertheless, reminding people that Wikipedia is not supposed to be just about covering popular topics won't hurt.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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