On 4 Jan 2019, at 9.10, Paulo Santos Perneta
<paulosperneta(a)gmail.com> wrote:
As someone already mentioned earlier in this thread, I believe there is a
concrete structural obstacle in mobile editing, which has to do with the
ability of searching resources, quickly reading books, papers, PDF
articles, a plethora of websites, news, etc, and using them in Wikipedia
articles in such a limited visual space. Turning "dumb editing" easier will
certainly have the collateral effect of bringing huge amounts of vandalism
from some given networks, leading to the complete blocking of those
networks from editing in Wikipedia, or even in all Wikimedia projects, as
is has been happening with some regularity since mobile editing was
released. This for smartphones.
Editing from tablets is a total different story, as it can be very similar
to what we do in the laptops and desktop computers, a tablet solution, as
proposed, possibly could have success in providing a better environment. On
the other hand, the current desktop version works fairly well in tablets,
so we just have to switch from the mobile version, which is really
suboptimal, and quite difficult to use, to that one.
Cheers,
Paulo
Yethrosh <yethrosh(a)gmail.com> escreveu no dia terça, 1/01/2019 à(s) 21:19:
I believe much depends on Wikipedia Mobile app.
Users are mostly on mobile
now and they feel it natural to do any thing from mobile. If only, creating
articles and adding citations could be done easily through mobile app, can
make a big difference.
On Mon, 31 Dec 2018, 2:22 a.m. David Cuenca Tudela <dacuetu(a)gmail.com
wrote:
Answering the initial question: It depends on how
you understand "death".
Wikipedia is the manifestation of a collection of algorithms running in
the
minds of thousands of people. With time it could
become less popular to
run
that algorithm in your life, or you would like to
try a different one.
With
less people then the Wikipedias would be
different as they are today.
More
out-of-date information, less capacity to oversee
the project,
stagnation,
and perhaps eventually irrelevance. Myspace,
digg, and winamp are still
alive, however people prefer other options these days.
I think it is important to move with the flow, and open new opportunities
for collaboration as the technology and our contributor base are ready
for
them. Wikidata started 6 years ago, Structured
Commons is in the making,
and who knows what could come next.
In the age of review manipulation and mistrust, I see opportunities in
identifying thought leaders, and building a balanced critique on a
subject
based on multiple sources. Wikipedia does this
partially, but it is not
its
main aim. Assigning trust to people or
organizations is something that
the
community does quite well, so it could be applied
to other contexts.
A snippet-pedia also sounds useful, specially if a topic could be
explained
with different levels of complexity. Layman's
explanations are really
useful and there are communities built around them (for instance ELI5
with
16 million subscribers), however their
explanations are neither
collaborative nor structured, so it is quite difficult to improve them or
navigate them.
It doesn't matter so much that Wikipedia "dies", what matters is that the
Wikimedia community adapts with new projects that keep the spirit of
gathering, organizing, and sharing knowledge alive. Perhaps we could also
consider other approaches that could be executed in real life. With
diverse
approaches, there would be different kind of
contributors, aka more
diversity. I would definitely welcome projects that would attract 90% of
female contributors, even if they are radically different and they are
not
a wiki. In the end our mission is to enable
everyone to share knowledge,
not necessarily encyclopedic, and not necessarily using current
technology.
Just because we have a hammer doesn't mean
that all problems can be
solved
with it.
Regards,
Micru
On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 10:35 PM Yaroslav Blanter <ymbalt(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> I have written a long text today (posted in my FB) which the readers of
> this mailing list might find interesting. I copy it below. I understand
> that it is very easy to critisize me for side issues, but if you want
to
comment/reply I would appreciate if you address the main issue. The
target
> audience I was thinking about was general (not necessarily
> Wikimedia-oriented), and for the readers from this mailing list the
first
> several paragraphs can sound trivial (or even
trivial and wrong). I
> apologize in advance.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
> _________________
> I currently have a bit of time and can write on the future of
Wikipedia.
> Similarly to much of what I write it is
probably going to be useless,
but
> someone may find it interesting. For
simplicity, I will be explicitly
> talking about the English Wikipedia (referring to it as Wikipedia). I
am
active in
other projects as well, and some of them have similar issues,
but
there are typically many other things going on
there which make the
picture
> more complicated.
>
> Let us first look at the current situation. Wikipedia exists since
2001,
and in a
couple of weeks will turn 18. Currently, it has 5.77 million
articles. I often hear an opinion that all important articles have
already
> been created. This is incorrect, and I am often the first person to
point
> out that this is not correct. For example,
today I created an article
on
an
urban locality in Russia with the population of
15 thousands. Many
articles
are indeed too short, badly written, or suffer
from other issues, and
they
need to be improved. There are new topics which
appear on a regular
basis:
new music performers, new winners of sports
competitions or prizes, and
so
> on. As any Web 2.0 project, Wikipedia requires a regular cleanup, since
> there are many people happy to vandalize the 5th website in the world
in
> terms of the number of views. However, as a
general guideline, it is
not
so
> much incorrect to state that all important things in Wikipedia have
been
> already written. Indeed, if someone looks for
information in Wikipedia
-
or, more
precisely, uses search engines and gets Wikipedia as the first
hit
> — they are likely to find what they need with more than 99%
chance.
>
> In this sense, Wikipedia now is very different from Wikipedia in 2008
or
> Wikipedia in 2004. Ten and especially fifteen
years ago, everybody
could
> contribute something important. For example,
the article on the 1951
film
> "A Streetcar Named Desire", which
won four Academy Awards, was started
in
> 2005, as well as an article on Cy Twombly, at
the time probably the
most
famous
living artist. This is not possible anymore. This is why the
number
of active editors is currently dropping - to
contribute to the content
in a
> meaningful way, one now has to be an advanced amateur - to master some
> field of knowledge much better than most others do. Or one can be a
> professional - but there are very few professionals contributing to
> Wikipedia in their fields, and there are very few articles written at a
> professional level. Attempts to attract professionals have been made
for
many
years, and, despite certain local success, generally failed. They
have
been going now for long enough to assume they
will never succeed on a
large
> scale. Wikipedia is written by advance amateurs for amateurs. However,
> despite the decline in the number of editors, there are enough
resources
to
maintain and to expand the project. It does not
mean there are no
problems
> - there are in fact many problems. One of the most commonly discussed
one
> is systemic bias - there is way more
information on Wikipedia on
subjects
pertaining to North America than to Africa, and if a topic is viewed on
differently in different countries, one can be sure that the American
view
> dominates. But it is usually thought - and I agree with this - that
these
drawbacks
are not crucial, and Wikipedia is atill a useful and
sustainable
> project. Wikipedia clearly has its ecosystem, there are no competitors
to
> talk about, and all attempts to fork it were
unsuccessful. There is a
> steady development, and everybody is happy.
>
> Does this mean that everything is fine and we do not need to worry?,
just
to wait
until missing articles get written, or even to help this by
writing
> them ourselves?
>
> Absolutely not. To understand this, we can look again at the editor
base.
> There are detailed studies, but, for a
starter, it is a nightmare to
edit
Wikipedia
from a cell phone. It is possible but not much easier to edit
it
> from a tablet. The mobile version is different from a desktop one, and
it
> is not really optimized for editing. This is
a known problem, but one
> aspect of it is clear. Most Wikipedia editors actually own a desktop
and
a
laptop. This brings them into 18+ category. There
are of course
exceptions,
but the fact is that the editor base gets older,
and this is a problem.
The
problem is not so much at this point that we all
die and there will be
nobody to edit Wikipedia. The problem is that the next generation (18-)
has
very different ways of getting information. And I
guess they are not
interested in editing Wikipedia, and they will not get interested when
they
grow up - possibly beyond introducing minor
corrections, which can be
done
> from a phone.
>
> Traditionally, students were always among the core of the editors base.
> They already have some knowledge and they still have time to edit. When
> they graduate, find a job and start a family, they have way less time
and
> typically stop editing. The next group are
retirees. Between students
and
> retirees, we have a tiny fraction of
dedicated enthusiasts who are
ready
to
take time from work and family, but they are
really not numerous. Well,
and
very soon we are going to lose students as
editors. And we should be
happy
> if we do not lose them as readers.
>
> I am 51, and I do not know much about the 18- generation, but I know
two
important
things about them. They have a very short attention span and
difficulties to concentrate. And they get a graphical and visualized
information much more easier than texts. For example, my son is capable
of
> watching three or four movies per day, but he has difficulties to read
20
pages
from a book.
Well, the first question is whether an encyclopedia is an appropriate /
the
best format for them to get knowledge (as it is
for us). I do not know
the
> answer. What I write below assumes that the answer is positive,
otherwise
> the rest of the text does not make sense.
>
> The next question is what should be done. How Wikipedia should look
like
to
be accessible to this generation? The answer
seems to be obvious.
Articles
> must be short and contain a lot of graphic information. May be they
need
to
be videoclips. Short clips. Or, at lest, they
must contain clips, with
more
> voice and less letters. If one needs more detailed information or just
> further information - one hops to the next article or watches the next
> clip.
>
> This is a paradigm shift. Currently, the editors generally consider
that
it
is good to have long Wikipedia articles - because
long means more
complete.
Sometimes there are even proposals (fortunately
isolated and without
followup) to delete all short articles even if they describe notable
topics
> and contain verified information. Clips are almost not in use. Of
course
they
still need to be made, but this is not such a big problem - there
are
> plenty of school students who have their own youtube channel, if they
can
> make clips, everybody can.
>
> The most difficult question is how this can be realized. I believe it
is
not
possible to just transform Wikipedia like this - make articles
shorter
and simpler and spit them. First, this might be
good for the young
generation, but this is still not good for the 18+ generation. Second,
such
reforms should be either be approved by Wikipedia
community through
consensus, or be imposed by the Wikimedia Foundation who owns the
project.
The likelihood of either is zero. Just to give
one argument, the
community
is, well, the community of editors, of the same
18+ people with laptops
who
have no difficulties reading long texts.
I envision it differently. Ideally, we have the Wikipedia as it is now,
but
> on top of this, every article has a collection of shorter companion
> articles, simple and a paragraph or two long, so that each of them can
be
> read in half a minute, They should not have
excessive markup,
references,
> categories or anything else which can be
found in the main article if
> needed. References in Wikipedia are required not for the sake of having
> references, but as a means to ensure that the information is
verifiable -
and if
the main article does it the companion articles do not need to.
Some
> of these companion articles can be in fact clips - there is a
difficulty
> that clips can not be edited collaboratively,
but I am sure this one
can
be
> solved. If anybody wants to solve it.
>
> The status of what I have written above is science fiction. I am sure
if
I
come with this proposal to a village pump of
Wikipedia, it will be dead
within a day. In addition, it requires some modifications of MediaWiki
which can only be done by the Foundation. And I am not really looking
forward for the Foundation implementing this either. I have a lot of
respect for some of the Foundation employees, but it has now grown up
into
> a big corporation now and behaves as a big corporation, where some
people
> care less about the product and more about
other things, and some look
at
> Wikipedia editors, aka "unorganized
volunteers", as some annoying
> phenomenon, which they can tolerate but are not willing to listen to.
My
forecast
is pretty pessimistic. Unless a miracle happens (and I
currently,
> at least not from my perspective, do not see any reasons for a miracle
to
happen),
soon or late will realize this, It might be a startup company,
or
> a non-commercial. And Wikipedia will stay as it is, and, after the
> standards change many times, it will not be readable / accessible to
most
> of internet users, and will slowly die. And
the results of what were
were
doing for
20 years will disappear. This is a usual development and
happens
to almost every human activity. We know that only
a few percents of
pieces
> of Ancient Greek and Roman literature survived until now.
>
> Yaroslav Blanter, editor and administrator of the English Wikipedia,
125
000
edits.
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