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
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