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
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