Hi Anders,
While I would normally agree with your logic, take note that for both the Cebuano and Waray Wikipedias, there were only 1-2 editors who said "yes" to the endeavor. For Waray, that was JinJian. For Cebuano, that happened to also be JinJian and one other editor who is currently not active.
I think Sverker meant well when he proposed (and implemented) bot-generated articles for both Wikipedias, but other Filipino Wikipedians have also seen first-hand what bot-generated articles do. As I mentioned previously, the Tagalog Wikipedia also had tens of thousands of bot-generated articles (our article count went up from near-20,000 to over 60,000 as a result), which was stopped only because of community opposition. The biggest question thus is how will a small community be able to maintain all these articles to begin with?
Now, as I’ve understood Sverker has given Wikipedia editing workshops in Cebu, as has Wikimedia Philippines in Samar and Leyte (where Waray is spoken). At this point, we’re figuring out how to grow our community in those regions, though if you ask me we’re still at a loss as to how we can sustainably grow communities in the Philippines without us having to look at them too closely. It’s not just a matter of content not being there—we’re also dealing with a whole gamut of socio-cultural factors as to why after all our attempts at introducing Wikipedia to people and showing them how to edit, people still don’t choose to do so.
That said, while I also think the Wikipedians concerned meant well, I hope this serves as a lesson to those considering bot-generated articles: bot-generated articles won’t jump-start a community, as the Cebuano and Waray examples have shown.
Regards,
Josh
Wiadomość napisana przez Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se w dniu 7 lip 2015, o godz. 04:33:
I am not saying this should be repeated. I am saying we should respect their choice, and not as outsiders criticize their effort. or put erroneous bad faith assumptions on why they did this choice.
Anders
Ilario Valdelli skrev den 2015-07-07 13:21:
The best evaluation is to understand the evolution and the trend.
In the last months in waray for instance I have seen less than 10 edits in the overall project in one month.
This is not revitalization. I agree with the enthusiasm of the community members but I am personally in favor of comparison of numbers in a long time perspective.
I am happy to see more data and to monitor them to know if this is a model to be replied but the numbers are not really supportive.
Regards Il 07/Lug/2015 13:12, "Anders Wennersten" mail@anderswennersten.se ha scritto:
What gives you the right to be judgemental how they act on their version? Is that your idea of the movement values and vision, to talk badly of other efforts?
and I know for a fact they did not to this to get into this list you are upset of. It is untrue when you state "like this which have inflated article counts"
And I also know as a fact they are very happy with this effort because it has energized their small community. You talk of big increased I think of how many communities of this size that implodes which is a more common scenario.
As I have already stated I have no problem that you (and others) have another view of the benefits of botgenrated arciels.
But please be supportive to the very small communities, who do their best to survive and grow
Anders
Craig Franklin skrev den 2015-07-07 12:21:
There is already a consensus on enwiki (please, hold your rotten tomatoes) that projects like this which have inflated article counts due to extensive botting rather than through having a lively community not be included on the main page. I think a lot of the comments here about a huge article count attracting communities to curate that content are somewhat disingenous, it seems that despite having lots of articles there is only one active user on Waray Wikipedia, who is responsible for more than 99% of total edits. As Milos has alluded to, "number of articles" is a poor metric for understanding how useful a particular project is to speakers of that language.
Speaking here as a speaker of a minority language myself, I understand the temptation of quickly creating lots of articles to have some sort of demonstrable impact, and I believe there is a place for some bot generation of articles on any project. But after hitting "Random" a few times on Waray, and seeing what came back, I'm not really sure how this is a more useful resource for speakers of the language than just going into Wikidata with the interface set to Waray. I believe the time honoured, if slower way of creating a Wikipedia, lovingly handcrafting it article by article, is far more likely to lead to a positive impact for people.
Cheers, Craig
On 7 July 2015 at 07:55, Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org wrote:
Indeed, as Josh points out, there are also costs (even if only perceived
or reputational costs) to populating a tiny Wikipedia with next to no active editors with hundreds of thousands of bot-generated stubs. Is having stubs on all French communes in Cebuano better than having nothing in Cebuano? Probably, yes. And by increasing pageviews (which is measurable), one increases the likelihood of "organic" conversion of readers into editors (which is *still* the most effective way to make Wikipedians, albeit not the easiest to directly control).
But, again as Josh says, that increase in *editorship* is yet to be attained. The Waray Wikipedia (btw, "Waray-Waray" is, it turns out, objectionable to Waray speakers, and is mildly derogatory) is still largely edited by *one* committed individual, User:JinJian[1], as the stats plainly show. Given that the bot was run *with* JinJian's consent, there can be no objection to its operation.
As Milos suggests, there seems to be an emotional response to those Wikipedias appearing in the top 10 view. This should be divorced from those communities' sovereign decisions to run or not run the bot. If the top 10 inclusion truly bothers people, and there's a strong consensus that Wikipedias largely populated by bot-generated stubs "should" not be included, a discussion could be had on what this view *should* mean, precisely, if not plainly the top 10 Wikipedias by article count. And whatever refined definition is agreed upon (e.g. thresholds like a minimum number of active editors, or some formula involving the "article depth" figure, or whatever) can then be made the basis for the list, or indeed, for a different list, that would be more satisfying for those who are displeased with being "under" these Wikipedias on the list.
A.[1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaWAR.htm#wikipedians
On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 2:04 PM, Josh Lim jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com wrote:
I can probably speak for those communities. On the whole, the logic
behind the Lsjbot experiment was simple: build it and they will come.
So far though, this hasn’t happened. We from the Tagalog Wikipedia were also approached for this experiment, but we know what happens when bot-generated articles are made: the community is overwhelmed. Out of
that
fear, we declined to participate.
One of the concerns some editors in the Philippines have (and these are sentiments I share) is that these two Wikipedias turn us into a laughingstock, willing to increase article numbers at any cost. At one point, the Cebuano Wikipedia was described as a Wikipedia of French communes, not content relevant to Cebu or Cebuanos. I don’t think we’d like that with other Wikipedias in the Philippines or elsewhere.
Regards,
Josh
Wiadomość napisana przez WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> w dniu 6 lip 2015, o godz. 04:52:
> These are fascinating experiments, I hope that the Waray-waray and > Cebuano
> communities will at some point report back to the wider community as to > how
> this worked out. My fear is that too fast a growth rate could overwhelm > whatever community we have in those languages leading to burn out of > existing editors dealing with too many newbies at once, my suspicion is > that this will vary by language depending on such variables as the > ratio of
> PC users to smartphone users, and the ease with which editors can > access the necessary character sets. > We have long known that bot creation of stubs that are of interest to > speakers of a language is a way to recruit readers, and that some > readers become editors. What I think we don't yet know is the maximum growth rate that a wiki community can cope with. > There is also a sustainability angle, though hopefully we can mitigate > that
> by bot replacing of articles where the source has changed but they > haven't
> been edited on the Cebuano or Waray-waray Wikipedias. Otherwise within > a decade we could have pedias that look very dated, for example various > record holders whose articles in other languages show their records > have been surpassed, and villages > WereSpielChequers > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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JAMES JOSHUA G. LIM Bachelor of Arts in Political Science Class of 2013, Ateneo de Manila University Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
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JAMES JOSHUA G. LIM Bachelor of Arts in Political Science Class of 2013, Ateneo de Manila University Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com mailto:jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com | +63 (915) 321-7582 Facebook/Twitter: akiestar | Wikimedia: Sky Harbor http://about.me/josh.lim http://about.me/josh.lim