Hoi, I don't but there is a place for them and it is not in endless drudgery that is best done in other ways. We need text junkies who love their language, who can explain things and make them understood as expected of an encyclopaedia. We do not need endless wikitext we need text. We do not need templates galore every time done in an incompatible and unintelligible way. Article writers should be able to distance themselves from such drudgery.
When you call article writers people who are very good at such nonsense than yes, we need fewer of those because in the end they lose us more writers than they gain us quality content. Thanks, GerardM
On 23 June 2015 at 23:16, Ed Erhart the.ed17@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard,
We need many more "text junkies," also known as article writers. Don't denigrate them.
Best, --Ed
On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 1:50 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, I think I understand how much time is wasted replicating the same thing over and over again. When we know specific facts for instance an old president of the Sierra Leone dies, all articles about him have to
change.
When new demographics of Almere become known, all articles are to change. Adding information to Wikidata should be trivially easy on a smartphone. This has been proven by "The Game". When it is that easy to add information, the information can be updated in lists, in info boxes and alerts may be generated to modify the text where needed. You will often find that there is little to write when all the list, categories, info boxes are already updated.
The consequence is that people who want to write articles may continue doing this. They do what they like best but at the same time we can do
with
fewer text junkies. The fun thing is that experience has learned us that when information becomes more complete we will attract more people
anyway.
It is just that all information does not need to be typed in manually all the time, everywhere ad nauseam.
With more people adding data that is used everywhere, the problem of sourcing becomes easier as well. Because a source is a source <grin> and every language has its bias </grin> but that is a different issue. One solace, we should always compare Wikidata data with other external
sources.
In this way we will also get some/more grip on what sources to trust. :) Thanks, GerardM
On 22 June 2015 at 23:46, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard, I think you may be missing the point of the NYT op-ed. The
issue
isn't data, it's people who will use that data (whether it comes from structured data sets like Wikidata, or from dead-tree or electronic
media)
to create articles, curate them, maintain them, keep the various
wikipedias
mostly spam-free, and develop communities around them. We're not
lacking
in data. We're lacking in human beings and healthy, growing
communities.
On the other hand, I'm not entirely certain that Andrew's concerns
about
the use of smartphones as the primary mode of access is entirely justified. We've known for a long time that many of our editors in
Asian
countries edit using smartphones, often with a keyboard attached; we've even featured them in videos. But realistically, the overwhelming
majority
of Wikipedia *readers* have never considered, even for a moment,
actively
participating in editing - and it has been that way pretty much since
at
least 2005, and maybe earlier. We can do better, of course, and making
it
easier to edit on tablets in particular is a worthwhile enterprise (smartphones...well, I'm not even persuaded they're going to exist five years from now in the way that we know them today...)
Risker/Anne
On 22 June 2015 at 13:41, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Magnus pointed the way forward when he started MediaWiki. When you
look
into the whole stack of his data related tools, you will find how
they
make
aggregating data a whole lot easier and worthwhile. He demonstrated
how
people on a mobile can be asked to help with "simple" tasks it works
well
and it continues to work in production (labs willing).
When you are talking micro contributions, every statement in Wikidata
is
one. It can easily be done from a mobile when the UI is given
attention.
It
is known how to create articles from data. The Swedes, Dutch etc have
done
it often enough and it brought them more readers and more editors...
Study what we already know. There is nothing new here and the
solutions
are
there to be had. We only have to accept them. I do agree that the
old
old
way of Wikipedia is ultimately a dead end. Thanks, GerardM
On 22 June 2015 at 19:28, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
What we need to figure out is how to allow translation of articles through micro contributions via cellphones.
Maybe send out sentences one by one for translation from one
language
to another. Just start with the leads of articles that are deemed
to
be of good quality. Than when the lead is all translated join it
back
together and add it to that language. This would of course only
apply
to articles which are non existent in the target language.
Maybe Amir's "content translation" tool could do this eventually https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
Starting July 2015 I am a board member of the Wikimedia Foundation My emails; however, do not represent the official position of the
WMF
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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 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 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 Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe