I would absolutely recommend Stack Exchange. The software is far more suitable for community Q&A than Mediawiki. The Stack Exchange network of sites also share much of the free content and community spirit of Wikimedia. For example, Q&As are licensed under CC-BY-SA and the sites are community run.

Thanks for the heads up, Tom. I wasn't aware of this proposal. For others, the link is:

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/13716/wikis-and-wikipedia

The promise to "commit" to the project doesn't require you to log in. The "commitment" is as follows:

"I commit to participate actively in Wikis and Wikipedia for at least three months, especially during the private beta, and to ask or answer at least ten questions."

Best, Oliver

On 21 Jul 2011, at 21:03, Thomas Morton wrote:

There was a push to launch a stackexchange site relating to Wikipedia a few months back. It's currently in the commitment phase - needing people to commit to seeding it.

SE is a proven QA platform; so worth considering.

Tom Morton

On 21 Jul 2011, at 21:00, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:

...

This is a good idea. They are using OSQA, yes? SJ

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Jan Kucera (Kozuch) garbage5@seznam.cz wrote:

...

Hi there,

I propose to start a Q&A system within Wikimedis. We need a central place for help. Getting an advise is too complicated now if a person has very diverse questions, he/she needs to look for various wiki discussion pages. Not very easy for newbies. Could be inspired by the help site of OpenStreetMap.

Following bug was filled: "Install Q&A system at help.en.wikipedia.org" https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29923

Discussion and hopefully creation of the site is more that welcome.

Thanks for your support!

Cheers,

Kozuch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kozuch

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Stack Exchange is nice, has an acceptable CC-BY-SA license too, but I would host the content ourselves. Looks like SE uses OSQA anyways. Please see my bug 29923 (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29923) for software options for Wikimedia:

I made a (very quick) research on open source Q&A systems:

Some software options: - http://www.osqa.net/ (Python) - http://www.question2answer.org/ (PHP 4.3+, MySQL 5) - http://shapado.com/ (Ruby) - http://www.lampcms.com/ - http://pligg.com/ - http://askbot.org

Kozuch

------------ Původní zpráva ------------ Od: Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com Předmět: Re: [Foundation-l] Start "questions and answers" site within Wikimedia Datum: 21.7.2011 22:56:08

---

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:31 PM, Oliver Moran oliver.moran@gmail.com wrote:

...

I would absolutely recommend Stack Exchange. The software is far more suitable

for community Q&A than Mediawiki. The Stack Exchange network of sites also share much of the free content and community spirit of Wikimedia. For example, Q&As are licensed under CC-BY-SA and the sites are community run.

True. But we don't need to use proprietary software for this.

OSQA shares the stackexchange workflow http://linuxexchange.org/

And Question2Answer is the most actively used & updated free-software platform, also php: http://www.question2answer.org/directory.php

SJ

...

Thanks for the heads up, Tom. I wasn't aware of this proposal. For others, the

link is:

...

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/13716/wikis-and-wikipedia

The promise to "commit" to the project doesn't require you to log in. The

"commitment" is as follows:

...

"I commit to participate actively in Wikis and Wikipedia for at least three

months, especially during the private beta, and to ask or answer at least ten questions."

...

Best, Oliver

On 21 Jul 2011, at 21:03, Thomas Morton wrote:

...

There was a push to launch a stackexchange site relating to Wikipedia a few months back. It's currently in the commitment phase - needing people to commit to seeding it.

SE is a proven QA platform; so worth considering.

Tom Morton

On 21 Jul 2011, at 21:00, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:

...

This is a good idea.  They are using OSQA, yes?   SJ

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Jan Kucera (Kozuch) garbage5@seznam.cz

wrote:

...

...

...

...

Hi there,

I propose to start a Q&A system within Wikimedis. We need a central place

for help. Getting an advise is too complicated now if a person has very diverse questions, he/she needs to look for various wiki discussion pages. Not very easy for newbies. Could be inspired by the help site of OpenStreetMap.

...

...

...

...

Following bug was filled: "Install Q&A system at help.en.wikipedia.org" https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29923

Discussion and hopefully creation of the site is more that welcome.

Thanks for your support!

Cheers,

Kozuch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kozuch

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...

...

...

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Is it really that much load on Wikimedia sysops to install a (very simple) script like OSQA? For the value added it would pay itself quickly off. But this goes down to resource allocations and innovation potential at the Foundation, which I can not understand most of the time...

------------ Původní zpráva ------------ Od: Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com Předmět: Re: [Foundation-l] Start "questions and answers" site within Wikimedia Datum: 21.7.2011 23:07:15

---

...

True. But we don't need to use proprietary software for this.

Why?

Honest question; SE has sensible ideals and license their content well. Why add to the workload of our sysops and developers with another system to maintain and support....

We do Wiki's really well. SE do Q&A extremely well... QED.

I see companies make this mistake all the time; going down the "lets host everything ourselves" and ending up with inadequate services and support.

...

Looks like SE uses OSQA anyways.

StackExchange is the original :) OSQA is a clone of it.

The history of SE (which grew out of StackOverflow) is very interesting if you have a minute to read up on it. They have some awesome ideas about community interaction and moderation that we could consider adopting.

Bottom line; if we want a goo Q&A site, SE is the sensible option :)

Tom _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Ditto.

It is a disappointment in some respects that Stack Overflow uses proprietary software (not least because it is so wonderful) but in all other respects, as a community, they do a great job. I have had wonderful experiences with them and I would urge anyone to get behind them.

Whether their software is proprietary or not, their values and work is every bit as honourable as Wikimedia's. Sure, they do things slightly differently — but that doesn't mean they do things wrong.

There's no need to re-invent the wheel. If there's a bunch of cool people doings this already (and doing it better than anyone else I can see) then get behind them. Good people deserve the support of other good people. There's no need to see eye-to-eye on everything or to do everything on you own. There's plenty of work to be done and we can share the burden by simply respecting each others work.

Oliver

On 21 Jul 2011, at 22:21, Thomas Morton wrote:

...

Is it really that much load on Wikimedia sysops to install a (very simple) script like OSQA? For the value added it would pay itself quickly off. But this goes down to resource allocations and innovation potential at the Foundation, which I can not understand most of the time...

It's simpler than that in my mind... other people do Q&A much better, why bother with the hassle :)

That's just my 2p; I think self hosting is a bad idea from both a community and business perspective, but I won't belabour the point :)

Tom _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

From the perspective of our mission, they are indeed doing things

wrong. [From the perspective of running a small business, they may be doing just fine.]

Our mission statement: "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

Erm ... looks to me like that's exactly what Stack Exchange do. They empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license. And they are VERY effective in doing so. And the do it globally. That's all the boxes from our mission statement checked.

Proprietary software is often inefficient...

The issues you raise about open-source vs. proprietary software, that's an open-source vs. proprietary software debate - and one that sounds like it is on the ideological edge of that arena. As a software engineer who develops proprietary software, I can almost guarantee that a whole bunch of open-source software (e.g. MIT licenced) is in the Stack Exchange software. Indeed, just by looking at their web source its possible to see proof of that. Because of this, the matter of the benefits of open source software vs. the proprietary software is a theoretical one. In modern practise, the two cannot be so cleanly separated.

In any event, is it really relevant to us? And how does it pertain to the specific example of Stack Exchange? Stack Exchange content is freely licenced. It is content that we are interested in.

(Never minding the fact that the only credible suggestion thus for for a replacement software is a clone of the Stack Exchange software itself.)

There's no need to re-invent the wheel.

The "wheel" in this case is not only technological, it is human. A body of people already exist who will do this work. There is no need to "re-invent" those people and your reasons for doing so (in your reply to Thomas) sound positively tribal.

Oliver

On 22 July 2011 04:22, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 5:34 PM, Oliver Moran oliver.moran@gmail.com wrote:

...

It is a disappointment in some respects that Stack Overflow uses

proprietary software (not least because it is so wonderful) but in all other respects, as a community, they do a great job. I have had wonderful experiences with them and I would urge anyone to get behind them.

I like their spirit and community too. I would be happy to see a wikipedia StackExchange site exist. But it won't contribute to the global free toolchain for collaborative knowledge that we are part of -- that will have only limited long-term value.

Proprietary software is often inefficient for developing good and flexible toolchains, and subject to risks of external control and monopolistic pricing. It also tends to be inefficient for users at scale. We have a good bit of scale -- we might want a few instances of whatever Q&A tool we use -- and lots of custom existing help processes which we'd want to integrate into a Q&A system (aude listed a few of them).

...

Sure, they do things slightly differently — but that doesn't mean they do

things wrong.

From the perspective of our mission, they are indeed doing things wrong. [From the perspective of running a small business, they may be doing just fine.]

Effective access to collaborative knowledge is important to a harmonious society. As a result, basic knowledge-sharing tools and toolchains should be free, for any sort of use, customization, and improvement. The universal value of a Q&A system is directly tied to the importance that good free tools should be available to set one up.

We want to support these free toolchains, which is why we release all of our own code, and also why, when there are good free versions of proprietary tools, we should support them and help them grow. That support is one of the ways we contribute to the greater movement, and has a lasting value to other knowledge projects around the world.

...

There's no need to re-invent the wheel.

Noone has suggested building our own Q&A tool, but rather choosing one of the available free-software tools.

Whether we host that ourselves or not is a separate question. Both OSQA and Question2Answer offer hosted services. (However we don't want one of our services vulnerable to being shut down by an unfriendly host, so any solution we use must be one that we could choose to host ourselves, if necessary.)

Thomas writes:

...

the main advantage is that your putting it under a name and community who are already experienced at doing really good QA - so your seed of volunteers is going to be that much better! You will get SE veterans who

are

...

also Wiki editors that will be much more inclined to contribute, for example. With a site such as this, kudos and points means everything - because answering questions (especially the horribly mundane ones..) is tedious and boring work. And SE have nailed that vibe.

I agree that they have nailed that vibe. Quora have tapped into it as well. It is a valuable vibe :-) and also one deeply rooted in human nature, like wiki editing.

For precisely the reasons you mention, it is important for us to have a better in-house QA tool. We need a better channel for the people who are in that zone to shine on Wikipedia -- beyond simply manning the Reference Desk and similar pages in various languages (which many hundreds of them already do).

We have some pretty stellar community groups to seed such a site with ourselves -- and this will offer a place for many more who are nonplussed by wiki editing to get involved and stay involved.

SJ

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There's a simple question: Can you run all key services relevant to

Wikimedia using only free/open software?

The question of "key service" is very interesting. If something were considered to be a key service, I would definately say that it should be managed by Wikimedia and, for practical reasons, rely only on free software (as far as possible). But is a Q&A facility a "key service"? Or is it something that, for example, a community like exists on Stack Exchange can do just as well - maybe even better?

The other things below are also very interesting and spot on.

Oliver

On 22 July 2011 09:44, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:

On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 1:25 AM, Oliver Moran oliver.moran@gmail.com wrote:

...

The issues you raise about open-source vs. proprietary software, that's

an

...

open-source vs. proprietary software debate - and one that sounds like it

is

...

on the ideological edge of that arena. As a software engineer who

develops

...

proprietary software, I can almost guarantee that a whole bunch of open-source software (e.g. MIT licenced) is in the Stack Exchange

software.

...

Indeed, just by looking at their web source its possible to see proof of that. Because of this, the matter of the benefits of open source software vs. the proprietary software is a theoretical one. In modern practise,

the

...

two cannot be so cleanly separated.

There's a simple question: Can you run all key services relevant to Wikimedia using only free/open software? If the answer is no, we're losing something very important, which isn't merely about sticking to our guns, but about ensuring the survivability of what we're doing for not just years, but decades to come.

I think the idea of a dedicated Q/A site is an interesting one -- but not necessarily the best way to address the underlying problem. We're test-deploying a small feature for microfeedback (including requests for help) from new users next week. The initial deployment is designed to assess the signal/noise ratio of such microfeedback & make a decision about whether to iterate further on that model. You can read a bit more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VPT#Quick_Feedback_on_Editing_Experie...

Such systems could potentially be expanded further, as can systems like the new Article Feedback tool, to carefully manage, curate and respond to a wide variety of subjective information flows from questions to comments to reviews. In the meantime, StackOverflow, Quora & friends are spending very substantial effort improving their editing features, e.g.: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/faster-edits-with-inline-editing/

IMO the convergence of curation and collaboration systems for subjective & objective information flows is a pretty natural development and one which we shouldn't be afraid of. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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but I won't belabour the point :)

Actually I will make one more comment (sorry) :) because I do actually have sound reasoning behind my suggestion beyond just "it's better", and it is only right I lay them out.

(I've maintained/operated/implemented a number of Q&A sites for small communities and various businesses so this is my experience)

If you stick OSQA up on help.wikimedia.org then very little will happen - it is unlikely to turn into the go-to help site for Wikimedia projects, you'll probably get an initial rush of contribution and then it will tail off as the questions stack up and the volunteers who are left to answer start to become overwhelmed.

The part of our audience that would need the Q&A is not the same as, say, OpenStreetMap. There you have people using the tool that need a forum to ask for help and advice. This we already have in a fairly effective form; discussion and project pages - and the people needing that Q&A will get better help that way.

In addition any self-hosted narrow focused site is unlikely to get a good seed of people able to provide support/answers (take this advice from experience :)).

So why would a hosted Q&A work better? Well because you could allow the scope to be expanded; a lot of the help needed is general to *any* wiki so it opens up any useful content to a wider audience. And such a site could still handle more specific queries.

But the main advantage is that your putting it under a name and community who are already experienced at doing really good QA - so your seed of volunteers is going to be that much better! You will get SE veterans who are also Wiki editors that will be much more inclined to contribute, for example. With a site such as this, kudos and points means everything - because answering questions (especially the horribly mundane ones..) is tedious and boring work. And SE have nailed that vibe.

I understand the issue of not having such a site under our control. But at the end of the day, doing Q&A is not our ball game. And we can end up with a much better service for our own users by biting the bullet and admitting it :)

There; hopefully that makes a little more sense!

I think a Q&A site is definitely something really important to explore as a way to encourage more contribution and a better understanding of Wikipedia and how it works.

Tom

aude aude.wiki@gmail.com writes:

I would like to see it located at help.wikimedia.org or help.en.wikimedia.org or something...

I would suggest ask.wikimedia.org

IMHO help.wikimedia.org is a bit ambiguous as it can mean "Please help Wikimedia".

Hi there,

to sum it up a bit I have to say following:

1) FAQ vs. Q&A There is a huge difference. FAQ is not really very participative, possibly not answering correct questions. Asking a question already is a way of participation in the project - we want to have more participation.

2) domain ask.wikimedia.org sounds very good

3) open source vs. proprietary I guess the foundation tries to use open source if possible. This is goes pretty much with its mission. There definitely are options for OS Q&A systems - they shoudl be used. Open source solutions present - no more discussion needed.

4) in-house hosting vs. outsourced hosting This results from point #3. We do not want to depend on 3rd party in terms of content security and reliability. As much as we can admire Stack Exchange the rule is to do it our way, however it should be more complicated.

5) integration with global login (SUL) Desperately needed for ease of use.

Erik, what is the underlying problem you want to address? Is that participation and editor retention? Do you think microfeedback is a solution? How do you think microfeedback is scalable? Who is going to evaluate all that? It seems to me rather like another "black box" created "in the name of this and that grant" rather than useful thing (I havent seen a lot of stats from Article Feedback neither). Dont you think an easy, solid and effective Q&A system would not work better for increasing participation? We can have a Q&A site up in minutes and the only coding task would be SUL integration...

Does anyone think there is a way how to test-drive some solution hosted in-house? Incubator, toolserver or where to start?

Kozuch

------------ Původní zpráva ------------ Od: Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org Předmět: Re: [Foundation-l] Start "questions and answers" site within Wikimedia Datum: 22.7.2011 13:00:37

---

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 22:07, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:

...

...

True.  But we don't need to use proprietary software for this.

Why?

Honest question; SE has sensible ideals and license their content well. Why add to the workload of our sysops and developers with another system to maintain and support....

We do Wiki's really well. SE do Q&A extremely well... QED.

I see companies make this mistake all the time; going down the "lets host everything ourselves" and ending up with inadequate services and support.

One can have both. Go with StackExchange for a while and see if it works out. The content is all licensed under CC BY-SA so if the StackExchange solution works well, we can always copy the good Q&As into Help: on wikipedia or meta or wherever. If it works really well, set up a local open source equivalent.

Basically use the StackExchange version as a test bed to see if Wikimedia should a Q&A site of its own.

-- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/

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Jan -- thanks for your work exploring systems -- I think it's definitely worth trying out for a test and agree it's worth trying to support participation. You note in the bug that there could be different sections for the different projects -- I've also always wanted a meta-focused Q&A site for all those questions about how Wikimedia itself works :)

best, Phoebe

2011/7/21 Jan Kucera (Kozuch) garbage5@seznam.cz:

Stack Exchange is nice, has an acceptable CC-BY-SA license too, but I would host the content ourselves. Looks like SE uses OSQA anyways. Please see my bug 29923 (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29923) for software options for Wikimedia:

I made a (very quick) research on open source Q&A systems:

Some software options:

• http://www.osqa.net/ (Python)
• http://www.question2answer.org/ (PHP 4.3+, MySQL 5)
• http://shapado.com/ (Ruby)
• http://www.lampcms.com/
• http://pligg.com/
• http://askbot.org

Kozuch

...

------------ Původní zpráva ------------ Od: Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com Předmět: Re: [Foundation-l] Start "questions and answers" site within Wikimedia Datum: 21.7.2011 22:56:08

---

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:31 PM, Oliver Moran oliver.moran@gmail.com wrote:

...

I would absolutely recommend Stack Exchange. The software is far more suitable

for community Q&A than Mediawiki. The Stack Exchange network of sites also share much of the free content and community spirit of Wikimedia. For example, Q&As are licensed under CC-BY-SA and the sites are community run.

True.  But we don't need to use proprietary software for this.

OSQA shares the stackexchange workflow   http://linuxexchange.org/

And Question2Answer is the most actively used & updated free-software platform, also php:   http://www.question2answer.org/directory.php

SJ

...

Thanks for the heads up, Tom. I wasn't aware of this proposal. For others, the

link is:

...

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/13716/wikis-and-wikipedia

The promise to "commit" to the project doesn't require you to log in. The

"commitment" is as follows:

...

"I commit to participate actively in Wikis and Wikipedia for at least three

months, especially during the private beta, and to ask or answer at least ten questions."

...

Best, Oliver

On 21 Jul 2011, at 21:03, Thomas Morton wrote:

...

There was a push to launch a stackexchange site relating to Wikipedia a few months back. It's currently in the commitment phase - needing people to commit to seeding it.

SE is a proven QA platform; so worth considering.

Tom Morton

On 21 Jul 2011, at 21:00, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:

...

This is a good idea.  They are using OSQA, yes?   SJ

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Jan Kucera (Kozuch) garbage5@seznam.cz

wrote:

...

...

...

...

Hi there,

I propose to start a Q&A system within Wikimedis. We need a central place

for help. Getting an advise is too complicated now if a person has very diverse questions, he/she needs to look for various wiki discussion pages. Not very easy for newbies. Could be inspired by the help site of OpenStreetMap.

...

...

...

...

Following bug was filled: "Install Q&A system at help.en.wikipedia.org" https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29923

Discussion and hopefully creation of the site is more that welcome.

Thanks for your support!

Cheers,

Kozuch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kozuch

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4266

...

...

...

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