Thanks for the reactions so far, they have been very useful. Let me answer
some of the points.
Re subject line: Obviously it is deliberately provocative to generate more
response and reach out to more people. Whereas what I write I do seriously,
if it stays a discussion of a dozen of people with the same views on the
subject it is probably useful.
Re milennials: this is clearly not a red herring. Just ask Facebook what
their demographics is and why the 18- generation is not using it.
Re introduction vs shorter articles: I agree that a well-written
introduction is very important (though in practice it more often becomes a
battleground than not, and for most articles on my watchlist with non-zero
traffic it gets deteriorated with time, and it takes really a LOT of effort
of the community to maintain them). However, there are many other things in
the articles which are important as well, and I believe having
non-introductory pieces separately, written in a simple language, and
without excessive formatting is important. Currently, we can not
accommodate them within the articles - because there are too many details
to add, references, and formatting (the intro is an exception, it can
indeed be written simply without references).
Re fork: I actually do not believe in forking Wikipedia. One can fork
Wikipedia but so far all attempts to fork the community were unsuccessful,
and I do not think they will be successful in the future. I do not have a
problem with forking, I just believe it is not going to happen. What I
believe it will happen is a completely new platform suitable for new ways
of getting information. Just to give a perspective, imagine someone started
a project in the 1980s based on videotapes, and produced a lot of tapes. By
now they have either been copied to other media, or got completely
forgotten because nobody can play tapes anymore, at least unless one is a
very serious amateur or goes to a specialized library.
Re main point: People, let us be serious. We missed mobile editing (well,
at least this has been identified as a problem, and something is being done
about it). We missed voice interfaces. We are now missing neural networks.
We should have been discussing by now what neural networks are allowed to
do in the projects and what they are not allowed to do. And instead we are
discussing (and edit-warring) whether the Crimean bridge is the longest in
Europe or not because different sources place the border between Europe and
Asia differently, and, according to some sources, the bridge is not in
Europe. Why do you think that if we keep missing all technological
development relevant in the field we are still going to survive?
Cheers
Yaroslav
On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 2:50 PM Zubin JAIN <jain16276(a)gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg>
wrote:
That's
exactly the point here! Maybe not everyone is like that, but
the pattern is
supported by studies. The question is: how do we
support (or, how do we make Wikipedia relevant for) this category?
But it's not supported by rigorous evidence, a few studies and a bunch of
clickbait headlines hawking a decline narrative aren't things that should
be used as a basis for deciding that the encylvopedia is out of date and
Wikipedia should change itself to a primary video format
> The idea that Wikipedia needs to be dumbed
down
"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." Dumbing down seems to be a fair
summary of the proposal
On Sun, 30 Dec 2018 at 20:51, Strainu <strainu10(a)gmail.com> wrote:
În dum., 30 dec. 2018 la 12:40, Zubin JAIN
<jain16276(a)gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg> a scris:
These are gross generalizations
That's exactly the point here! Maybe not everyone is like that, but
the pattern is supported by studies. The question is: how do we
support (or, how do we make Wikipedia relevant for) this category?
The idea that Wikipedia needs to be dumbed down
Nobody proposed that.
On Sun, 30 Dec 2018 at 17:21, Jane Darnell
<jane023(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> We need better upload interfaces for fixing spelling mistakes,
> adding blue links, categories, media, and all other common tasks.
I had a conversation with Dan Garry in Cape Town about why categories
and navboxes are not shown on mobile and it seems they are not a
"thing" anymore (aka not used by the readers, which prefer navigating
through inline links). For the rest, I agree. What do you think of the
CitationHunt tool? Would it help if integrated in the normal workflow?
În dum., 30 dec. 2018 la 12:57, Anders Wennersten
<mail(a)anderswennersten.se> a scris:
In my little duckpond (svwp) we have guidleines for the introduction
part of the article.
It should use (simple) language to enable 14-16 years old to understand
it (while the rest can use more complicated vocabulary)
How very interesting! I've always thought that Wikipedia should be
accessible for people with middle studies (highschool) but I've been
accused of trying to "dumb down" Wikipedia. Thanks for the idea!
More generally, yes, the introduction is the obvious candidate for
what Yaroslav is proposing, the question is how do you put it to the
best use? Are popups (currently enabled for anonymous users) enough?
Movies and visuals are complicated for most people, would an audio
help? Text to speech is pretty good (and dead cheap) these days and I
know WMSE has done some work in this domain. Would an audio of the
introduction help? What about reading the whole article?
This is a major topic, we should probably try to extract 2-3 ideas
that can be pushed forward from it.
Strainu
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--
Sincerely,
Zubin Jain
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