[Wikimedia-l] Re: Are we losing our readers?

Hello, Indeed, there is not much we can do about the "snippets" aspect. Besides that: I too worry about the general quality of Wikipedia content, about minimum standards and whether we (always) meet such standards. Also, sometimes a Wikipedia article is much too long. Would a "quality campaign" improve the attractiveness of Wikipedia for readers? Kind regards Ziko Am So., 9. Jan. 2022 um 17:33 Uhr schrieb Yaroslav Blanter <ymbalt(a)gmail.com>om>: > > Actually, I see an issue with snippets. > > Wikipedia articles have very variable quality. Some are reasonably good and contain reliable information which is confirmed by reliable sources listed in the article. But a lot have information which is promotional, POV, unconfirmed, or outright false. In Wikipedia, we have mechanisms to indicate that information is less reliable or more reliable (such as templates for example). But snippets do not have this information. If you want to know for example who was the US president after Jimmy Carter probably this question can be answered by a snippet to everyone's satisfaction. But if you want to know for example who is Elizabeth Holmes I doubt that information provided by a snippet is a good replacement to the lede of the Wikipedia article (may be this is not the best example but I hope you get what I want to say). It is like snippets give you information in black and white, and on Wikipedia we try to get it colored or at least shaded. > > Best > Yaroslav > > On Sun, Jan 9, 2022 at 2:41 PM Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Hi Xavier and all, >> >> You say, "even the WMF tried to rebrand itself from «Wikimedia Foundation» to «Wikipedia Foundation» in a move that I consider a disbelief towards its own content legacies" >> >> It seems these rebranding efforts are in fact ongoing after all. According to Meta,[1] the fundraising emails sent to donors over the past few months have had Jimmy Wales signing off as follows: >> >> Thanks, >> >> Jimmy Wales >> >> Wikipedia Foundation >> >> >> >> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fundraising&diff=next&… >> >> Email text linked in that edit: >> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OAjBvUJh3cwuYDzpXRusX7HqOOJIwtTfLXgTMRs… >> Archive link: https://archive.fo/J30ls >> >> On Sat, Jan 8, 2022 at 12:37 AM F. Xavier Dengra i Grau via Wikimedia-l <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote: >>> >>> Hi/Bona nit >>> >>> Specifically regarding the last emails about videos and new formats in university students and their use of Wikipedia. A truth is that we already had the chance to integrate better multimedia contents and formats via some channels that he already had: our sister projects. >>> >>> Wikiversity, Wikibooks or Wikisource were in the past powerful and attractive tools, valid to integrate knowledge in more flexible (non-enciclopedic) forms until mid- last decade. Until they were abandoned with no further tech investing. I remember having trained and mentorized schools, universities and public institutions in Catalonia on Wikibooks until 2015. It was seen as a really valid alternative by then. >>> >>> Since then WikiHow, Moodle, StuDocu, Notion or other participative niches have progressed with some multimedia inclusions as better opportunities than the WMF sister projects —even the WMF tried to rebrand itself from «Wikimedia Foundation» to «Wikipedia Foundation» in a move that I consider a disbelief towards its own content legacies. All this, despite many small-sized community efforts and requests to claim for better integration of multimedia features, that imho are the key to get these projects a bit back to new success. I don’t think that these competitors offer amazing features that we could not develop (apart from their cuter and cleaner interfaces?). >>> >>> Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and therefore I find that is normal that has some conceptual limitations in how it shapes and shows the content. You rely in other niches for more specific stuff. However, this may be easily tackled in Wikimedia if sister projects' potential and existing contents would be really valued and connected. >>> >>> That way, if videos are one of the reasons why there is a loss of readers (I agree that we should be able to see longers trend to unmask possible covid peaks) on Wikipedia, we could still redirect/invite/seduce them to alternatives that are still interactive, Open Access, participative & transparent (i.e. Wikimedia wikis). >>> >>> Best, >>> >>> Xavier Dengra >>> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l >> Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… >> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org… > To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org