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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