Hoi, Regularly I hear people say that Wikipedia is failing. When you then listen, there are all kinds of good reasons why Wikipedia is failing. Quality is low, issues with living persons, pov pushers a long litany of woes are all grounds to predict the imminent demise of Wikipedia. While all these issues may be grounds for concern, it is hardly indicative of failure. To me they are indicative of a wildly successful project coping with everything that is a consequence of success. I am of the opinion that most of our projects would love to have the same problems, the same issues, the same success as the few project that do well.
For most of our projects a lack of content, a lack of community ensure that the project is irrelevant. No growth, no interest is more killing then all the woes that our big projects suffer from. At Wikimania 2008 a presentation was given by developers from UNICEF who had done proper usability studies. They found that 100% of their newbie testsubjects were not able to create a new article.
This is serious. This explains why so many of our projects fail. We do not invite collaboration because people do not know how to. They do not know how to EVEN when they are explicitly invited to create a new article as they were in this research.
At the Wikimedia Conference Nederland, Jan-Bart de Vreede indicated in his speech that Kennisnet is interested in implementing the UNICEF extensions. These extensions are now localisable in any language at Betawiki. At ExtensionTesting, all the extensions have been tested against stable releases. Bugs were identified and some bugs were fixed. As a consequence it is likely that some more MediaWiki installations will benefit from research.
It seems obvious to people who deal with small projects that usability is one of the big issue when it comes to the moribunt status of our small projects. The question I put to you, what are we going to do to first agree that this is an issue and then to deal with this issue. Do we care that 80% of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM
At Wikimania 2008 a presentation was given by developers from UNICEF who had done proper usability studies. They found that 100% of their newbie testsubjects were not able to create a new article.
I wasn't there, so didn't see the presentation. Did they detail the problems these test subjects had? The first stage in fixing any problem is to identify precisely what the problem is.
Hoi, The presentation is online. I blogged about this extension in the past..
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/search/label/Usability
Thanks, GerardM
2008/11/30 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com
At Wikimania 2008 a presentation was given by developers from UNICEF who had done proper usability
studies.
They found that 100% of their newbie testsubjects were not able to create
a
new article.
I wasn't there, so didn't see the presentation. Did they detail the problems these test subjects had? The first stage in fixing any problem is to identify precisely what the problem is.
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Do we care that 80%
of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM
No. Why should we? Nobody actually reads shit like the albanian wikibooks (doesn't matter if that doesn't exist, you get my point). Such projects exist purely the monomaniacal benefit of the editor(s), not any readers. Let them all fail, with the exception of Wikipedias en,fr,de,ru,etc + wikt and commons.
CM
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Hoi, Small projects using MediaWiki for any of the languages that you indicate are relevant are failing for exactly the same reason. Thanks, GerardM
2008/11/30 Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk
Do we care that 80%
of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM
No. Why should we? Nobody actually reads shit like the albanian wikibooks (doesn't matter if that doesn't exist, you get my point). Such projects exist purely the monomaniacal benefit of the editor(s), not any readers. Let them all fail, with the exception of Wikipedias en,fr,de,ru,etc + wikt and commons.
CM
See the most popular videos on the web http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/115454061/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Huh? Could you please provide some evidence for this striking claim that the French and German Wikipedias are failing? Let me be clear: I don't think anybody reads the English wikibooks either!
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:15:46 +0100 From: gerard.meijssen@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
Hoi, Small projects using MediaWiki for any of the languages that you indicate are relevant are failing for exactly the same reason. Thanks, GerardM
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Please, speak for yourself :) I *do* care, and if there is an easy and definite solution, I'd love to embrace it. I think we should care about our little siblings, about the smaller languages as we call them, and support them if possible. I can only hope you were being extremely ironic :)
Because bear in mind, especially in those languages, a complemented work of human knowledge really adds something. In the large languages, we already had encyclopediae and dictionaries of good quality. Wikipedia is better sure, and has improved our lives. But now just imagine that you are living in Botswana, and on school (if you're lucky) there is very little material available... and now there is an encyclopedia... In YOUR language! Even if it only contains 1000 articles, you can already learn a lot from it. You can improve your knowledge, and increase the odds in competition with the western world. It won't do miracles of course, but every tiny little bit helps.
And now imagine that this goes for all languages. And not only encyclopediae, but also learning books, dictionaries and perhaps one day even other collections. Wikipedia *does* make a difference. (and I'd almost add: donate now ;-) )
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2008/11/30 Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk
Do we care that 80%
of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM
No. Why should we? Nobody actually reads shit like the albanian wikibooks (doesn't matter if that doesn't exist, you get my point). Such projects exist purely the monomaniacal benefit of the editor(s), not any readers. Let them all fail, with the exception of Wikipedias en,fr,de,ru,etc + wikt and commons.
CM
See the most popular videos on the web http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/115454061/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
No it doesn't. The greatest tool for the education of those poor sods in the 3rd world is the English Wikipedia, plus Spanish, French, etc. But mostly en. Here's why.
1. It's the biggest. It's the best. You learn the most. 2. You get to practice reading English at the same time. English is THE global language and will become even more so, mostly because of the economic dominance of the US and the fact that it's so easy to learn. You can learn to speak understandable English in a month: even if/when China takes over economically, we'll still do business in English. I know hundreds of people who can speak English as a second language: I know not one non-Chinese who speaks fluent Mandarin. Mr Botswana will do far better economically from en than he will from botswanian wiki. 3. It is not run by monomaniacal ethnic zealots, who find smaller wikis laughably easy to take over. Even ru wiki has a problem with this, I've heard. On en, people like me spend hours making sure that history is not distorted by fanatics and that our narratives offer an accurate, rational fair picture. There's little food for fundamentalists. God knows what crap you find on smaller wikis with less editorial oversight. In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Bombay, this seems particularly relevant.
Conclusion: let them all fail, bar the big ones.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:04:43 +0100 From: effeietsanders@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
Please, speak for yourself :) I *do* care, and if there is an easy and definite solution, I'd love to embrace it. I think we should care about our little siblings, about the smaller languages as we call them, and support them if possible. I can only hope you were being extremely ironic :)
Because bear in mind, especially in those languages, a complemented work of human knowledge really adds something. In the large languages, we already had encyclopediae and dictionaries of good quality. Wikipedia is better sure, and has improved our lives. But now just imagine that you are living in Botswana, and on school (if you're lucky) there is very little material available... and now there is an encyclopedia... In YOUR language! Even if it only contains 1000 articles, you can already learn a lot from it. You can improve your knowledge, and increase the odds in competition with the western world. It won't do miracles of course, but every tiny little bit helps.
And now imagine that this goes for all languages. And not only encyclopediae, but also learning books, dictionaries and perhaps one day even other collections. Wikipedia *does* make a difference. (and I'd almost add: donate now ;-) )
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2008/11/30 Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk
Do we care that 80%
of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM
No. Why should we? Nobody actually reads shit like the albanian wikibooks (doesn't matter if that doesn't exist, you get my point). Such projects exist purely the monomaniacal benefit of the editor(s), not any readers. Let them all fail, with the exception of Wikipedias en,fr,de,ru,etc + wikt and commons.
CM
See the most popular videos on the web http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/115454061/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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Hoi, You added some pearl of wisdom at the end. It is obviously wasted for the people like me who do not understand Latin. In a similar way, if these other people do not read and understand English Spanish French etc, they are not informed with our pearls of wisdom.. Thanks, GerardM
2008/11/30 Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk
No it doesn't. The greatest tool for the education of those poor sods in the 3rd world is the English Wikipedia, plus Spanish, French, etc. But mostly en. Here's why.
- It's the biggest. It's the best. You learn the most.
- You get to practice reading English at the same time. English is THE
global language and will become even more so, mostly because of the economic dominance of the US and the fact that it's so easy to learn. You can learn to speak understandable English in a month: even if/when China takes over economically, we'll still do business in English. I know hundreds of people who can speak English as a second language: I know not one non-Chinese who speaks fluent Mandarin. Mr Botswana will do far better economically from en than he will from botswanian wiki. 3. It is not run by monomaniacal ethnic zealots, who find smaller wikis laughably easy to take over. Even ru wiki has a problem with this, I've heard. On en, people like me spend hours making sure that history is not distorted by fanatics and that our narratives offer an accurate, rational fair picture. There's little food for fundamentalists. God knows what crap you find on smaller wikis with less editorial oversight. In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Bombay, this seems particularly relevant.
Conclusion: let them all fail, bar the big ones.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:04:43 +0100 From: effeietsanders@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
Please, speak for yourself :) I *do* care, and if there is an easy and definite solution, I'd love to embrace it. I think we should care about
our
little siblings, about the smaller languages as we call them, and support them if possible. I can only hope you were being extremely ironic :)
Because bear in mind, especially in those languages, a complemented work
of
human knowledge really adds something. In the large languages, we already had encyclopediae and dictionaries of good quality. Wikipedia is better sure, and has improved our lives. But now just imagine that you are
living
in Botswana, and on school (if you're lucky) there is very little
material
available... and now there is an encyclopedia... In YOUR language! Even
if
it only contains 1000 articles, you can already learn a lot from it. You
can
improve your knowledge, and increase the odds in competition with the western world. It won't do miracles of course, but every tiny little bit helps.
And now imagine that this goes for all languages. And not only encyclopediae, but also learning books, dictionaries and perhaps one day even other collections. Wikipedia *does* make a difference. (and I'd
almost
add: donate now ;-) )
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2008/11/30 Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk
Do we care that 80%
of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM
No. Why should we? Nobody actually reads shit like the albanian
wikibooks
(doesn't matter if that doesn't exist, you get my point). Such projects exist purely the monomaniacal benefit of the editor(s), not any
readers. Let
them all fail, with the exception of Wikipedias en,fr,de,ru,etc + wikt
and
commons.
CM
See the most popular videos on the web http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/115454061/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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Right, you act as if smaller wikis were tremendous vessels of potential just waiting to be filled with pearls of wisdom, when experience suggests they are landfill sites. If Google develop something that could automatically translate every article on en into perfect Mongolian/Latvian/Zulu, your comment would make perfect sense. As it is it makes none.
And I suggest you google my sig. The irony is impressive.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:31:09 +0100 From: gerard.meijssen@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
Hoi, You added some pearl of wisdom at the end. It is obviously wasted for the people like me who do not understand Latin. In a similar way, if these other people do not read and understand English Spanish French etc, they are not informed with our pearls of wisdom.. Thanks, GerardM
2008/11/30 Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk
No it doesn't. The greatest tool for the education of those poor sods in the 3rd world is the English Wikipedia, plus Spanish, French, etc. But mostly en. Here's why.
- It's the biggest. It's the best. You learn the most.
- You get to practice reading English at the same time. English is THE
global language and will become even more so, mostly because of the economic dominance of the US and the fact that it's so easy to learn. You can learn to speak understandable English in a month: even if/when China takes over economically, we'll still do business in English. I know hundreds of people who can speak English as a second language: I know not one non-Chinese who speaks fluent Mandarin. Mr Botswana will do far better economically from en than he will from botswanian wiki. 3. It is not run by monomaniacal ethnic zealots, who find smaller wikis laughably easy to take over. Even ru wiki has a problem with this, I've heard. On en, people like me spend hours making sure that history is not distorted by fanatics and that our narratives offer an accurate, rational fair picture. There's little food for fundamentalists. God knows what crap you find on smaller wikis with less editorial oversight. In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Bombay, this seems particularly relevant.
Conclusion: let them all fail, bar the big ones.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:04:43 +0100 From: effeietsanders@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
Please, speak for yourself :) I *do* care, and if there is an easy and definite solution, I'd love to embrace it. I think we should care about
our
little siblings, about the smaller languages as we call them, and support them if possible. I can only hope you were being extremely ironic :)
Because bear in mind, especially in those languages, a complemented work
of
human knowledge really adds something. In the large languages, we already had encyclopediae and dictionaries of good quality. Wikipedia is better sure, and has improved our lives. But now just imagine that you are
living
in Botswana, and on school (if you're lucky) there is very little
material
available... and now there is an encyclopedia... In YOUR language! Even
if
it only contains 1000 articles, you can already learn a lot from it. You
can
improve your knowledge, and increase the odds in competition with the western world. It won't do miracles of course, but every tiny little bit helps.
And now imagine that this goes for all languages. And not only encyclopediae, but also learning books, dictionaries and perhaps one day even other collections. Wikipedia *does* make a difference. (and I'd
almost
add: donate now ;-) )
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2008/11/30 Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk
Do we care that 80%
of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM
No. Why should we? Nobody actually reads shit like the albanian
wikibooks
(doesn't matter if that doesn't exist, you get my point). Such projects exist purely the monomaniacal benefit of the editor(s), not any
readers. Let
them all fail, with the exception of Wikipedias en,fr,de,ru,etc + wikt
and
commons.
CM
See the most popular videos on the web http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/115454061/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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On Sunday 30 November 2008 23:24:58 Christiano Moreschi wrote:
No it doesn't. The greatest tool for the education of those poor sods in the 3rd world is the English Wikipedia, plus Spanish, French, etc. But mostly en. Here's why.
Did you know...
...that not everyone knows English?
Christiano Moreschi hett schreven:
No it doesn't. The greatest tool for the education of those poor sods in the 3rd world is the English Wikipedia, plus Spanish, French, etc. But mostly en.
Well, from a totalitarian point of view, that would be the best. A totalitarian system gives precendence to what is supposed to be the best for the society in its entirety (or its dominant faction...). A sytem that applies the principle of 'freedom' lets the people decide what's best for them.
Let's make a reality check: I live in Germany. In German public schools English is in the curriculum for all pupils. You can't graduate from school (even the most basic degree) without being confronted with English for several years. I don't know since when. At least since the 1930s. Perhaps even earlier. So almost every German had English lessons at some point in his life. But de facto opinion research instutes gain results of about 50 to 60 % when they make representative polls in Germany about whether people speak English. So roundabout 50 % of all Germans do not speak English. And we should keep in mind, that "speaking a foreign language" in many peoples minds is connected to "holidays" etc. Many of those people who state, that they speak English, could ask for directions in English-speaking places or they are able to buy groceries at Wal-Mart or something basic like that. But that doesn't mean, they would be able to understand encyclopedic content in English. Numbers are hard to estimate. Perhaps 20 % of all Germans can read and understand encyclopedic material in English? And even less are able to _write_ encyclopedic content in English. I'm quite sure this number will be clearly less than 10 % for Germany. Germany is a fully industrialized country with a well functioning education system. I guess numbers will be notedly lower in many other areas of the world.
At least 80 % of the human population on earth does not understand English. Let's think about it: What's easier? To teach billions of people English or to create good encyclopedias in many languages?
I cannot estimate the effort it needs to teach all people English. At least in Germany 70 years of teaching wasn't enough to make the Germans fluent in English. And the Romans and later the French and Spanish are trying to assimilate the Basque since 2000 years and Basque is still around and vivid. So I can say: It needs _much_effort to make one language known to all people. The effort necessary to create a reasonsable encyclopedia is easier to estimate. English Wikipedia met the milestone of 100,000 articles in February 2003. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_frequency there were 107 persons with at least 100 edits in the month of February 2003. 100 edits a month is a rough measure of "users dedicated to the project", I guess. That means 107 dedicated contributors were able to create a 100,000 entry encyclopedia in two years (actually it were even less users most of the time). That should be feasible for smaller languages too. If there is good and efficient public outreach it should even be doable for languages with less than 100,000 speakers, to create a 100,000 entry encyclopedia in two years. In western societies about one percent of the total population is teachers. The number of retired teachers will range somewhere between 0.5 to 0.3 compared to the number of active teachers. So there are 3 to 5 retired teachers per 1000 inhabitants. So in a population of 20,000 there will be around 100 retired teachers. If we could reach all those retired teachers and convince them to do something for Wikipedia in their free time (of which there is much for retired people) it should be possible to create a 100,000 entry encyclopedia in two years. Including other retired academics, non-academics, non-retired people, students etc. it should be possible for languages with even fewer speakers. Of course only with very good outreach...
And off course from a totalitarian point of view it's still a waste of time. But from a cultural positive point of view it's feasible.
Marcus Buck
Actually, the quality is a serious problem of all projects including en.wp. I thought it is obvious for everybody, but if not, I can provide more detail.
Cheers Yaroslav
Please, speak for yourself :) I *do* care, and if there is an easy and definite solution, I'd love to embrace it. I think we should care about our little siblings, about the smaller languages as we call them, and support them if possible. I can only hope you were being extremely ironic :)
Hoi, I wish for 80% of our projects to have the same problems as our bigger projects. It would be cool that we could compare the quality issues of the Xhosa Wikipedia or any of the bottom 80%. It takes content in order to talk about quality. The content is not there and consequently quality is not an issue. Thanks, GerardM
2008/11/30 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru
Actually, the quality is a serious problem of all projects including en.wp. I thought it is obvious for everybody, but if not, I can provide more detail.
Cheers Yaroslav
Please, speak for yourself :) I *do* care, and if there is an easy and definite solution, I'd love to embrace it. I think we should care about our little siblings, about the smaller languages as we call them, and support them if possible. I can only hope you were being extremely ironic :)
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We should indeed care. One thing is that we should do whatever we can to help new projects grow to a selfsustainable size in terms of content and contributors. The second is that we must accept that a lot of new projects will fail, but that this is no reason not to go ahead with even more new projects. If 1 out of 10 new projects survive, then the time spent on the 9 failed projects was not waisted. That one project in some "small language" helps fullfilling the vision of the Foundation as stated on those fundraisingpages I'm just now translating into the small language of Norwegian.
Thanks to Lodewijk for a posting here that actually gave me some inspiration to continue translating ;)
Finn Rindahl
2008/11/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
Hoi, I wish for 80% of our projects to have the same problems as our bigger projects. It would be cool that we could compare the quality issues of the Xhosa Wikipedia or any of the bottom 80%. It takes content in order to talk about quality. The content is not there and consequently quality is not an issue. Thanks, GerardM
2008/11/30 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru
Actually, the quality is a serious problem of all projects including en.wp. I thought it is obvious for everybody, but if not, I can provide more detail.
Cheers Yaroslav
Please, speak for yourself :) I *do* care, and if there is an easy and definite solution, I'd love to embrace it. I think we should care about our little siblings, about the smaller languages as we call them, and
support
them if possible. I can only hope you were being extremely ironic :)
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I don't see why it matters. As long as there's /some/ content, there's content that can be poor quality. If anything, a wiki with virtually no community is more susceptible to quality problems. If someone intentionally inserts misinformation or libel into an article on the English Wikipedia, it will likely be reverted in minutes, if not seconds. If someone does that on a small wiki with no active users, how long is it going to take to be removed? It might not show up in the top of Google search results, but its still a quality problem.
2008/11/30 effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com:
Because bear in mind, especially in those languages, a complemented work of human knowledge really adds something. In the large languages, we already had encyclopediae and dictionaries of good quality. Wikipedia is better sure, and has improved our lives. But now just imagine that you are living in Botswana, and on school (if you're lucky) there is very little material available... and now there is an encyclopedia... In YOUR language!
English is an official language of Botswana. Quite a lot of African countries move to English or French for education above a certain level.
Even if it only contains 1000 articles,
~102 articles currently.
you can already learn a lot from it. You can improve your knowledge, and increase the odds in competition with the western world.
What is Tswana for mass spectrometry (looking at the translations for that term across European languages is mildly amusing) ? There are large areas where if you don't speak english you can't operate in that area. There is nothing wikimedia can do about this. Highly questionable if we would even want to.
This doesn't mean we should give up on many languages but it does mean that we have to accept that the educated people from those countries may not want to use them and there is a significant risk of them becoming POV forks.
Hoi, EMC2 is a company who sells storage solutions to big companies. I was at a presentation of their documentation manager. He informed his audience that the people who buy their products invariably state that they prefer the English documentation. They always get the translations as well. The benefit to EMC2 is that they sell more products. The translation of their documentation adds pennies to the pound in costs, costs that are easily offset by the increased sales.
The point is that people understand things better when they are addressed in their own language EVEN when they can read the language that is foreign to them. Thanks, GerardM
2008/11/30 geni geniice@gmail.com
2008/11/30 effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com:
Because bear in mind, especially in those languages, a complemented work
of
human knowledge really adds something. In the large languages, we already had encyclopediae and dictionaries of good quality. Wikipedia is better sure, and has improved our lives. But now just imagine that you are
living
in Botswana, and on school (if you're lucky) there is very little
material
available... and now there is an encyclopedia... In YOUR language!
English is an official language of Botswana. Quite a lot of African countries move to English or French for education above a certain level.
Even if it only contains 1000 articles,
~102 articles currently.
you can already learn a lot from it. You can improve your knowledge, and increase the odds in competition with the western world.
What is Tswana for mass spectrometry (looking at the translations for that term across European languages is mildly amusing) ? There are large areas where if you don't speak english you can't operate in that area. There is nothing wikimedia can do about this. Highly questionable if we would even want to.
This doesn't mean we should give up on many languages but it does mean that we have to accept that the educated people from those countries may not want to use them and there is a significant risk of them becoming POV forks.
-- geni
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Have you forgotten that these are WIKIS we are talking about? It's not just a matter of translation: the technology isn't there to do it automatically and we don't have the manpower do it manually. Even if the technology were there, it's a WIKI. Unlike your friend's translations, our content can drastically deteriorate and become useless overnight if nobody's watching it.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:58:54 +0100 From: gerard.meijssen@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
Hoi, EMC2 is a company who sells storage solutions to big companies. I was at a presentation of their documentation manager. He informed his audience that the people who buy their products invariably state that they prefer the English documentation. They always get the translations as well. The benefit to EMC2 is that they sell more products. The translation of their documentation adds pennies to the pound in costs, costs that are easily offset by the increased sales.
The point is that people understand things better when they are addressed in their own language EVEN when they can read the language that is foreign to them. Thanks, GerardM
2008/11/30 geni geniice@gmail.com
2008/11/30 effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com:
Because bear in mind, especially in those languages, a complemented work
of
human knowledge really adds something. In the large languages, we already had encyclopediae and dictionaries of good quality. Wikipedia is better sure, and has improved our lives. But now just imagine that you are
living
in Botswana, and on school (if you're lucky) there is very little
material
available... and now there is an encyclopedia... In YOUR language!
English is an official language of Botswana. Quite a lot of African countries move to English or French for education above a certain level.
Even if it only contains 1000 articles,
~102 articles currently.
you can already learn a lot from it. You can improve your knowledge, and increase the odds in competition with the western world.
What is Tswana for mass spectrometry (looking at the translations for that term across European languages is mildly amusing) ? There are large areas where if you don't speak english you can't operate in that area. There is nothing wikimedia can do about this. Highly questionable if we would even want to.
This doesn't mean we should give up on many languages but it does mean that we have to accept that the educated people from those countries may not want to use them and there is a significant risk of them becoming POV forks.
-- geni
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Sorry, but to me this just sounds like FUD. Do you have any information to back up your claims about small wikis deteriorating? Don't forget, these are WIKIS we are talking about. In WIKIS everyone can change the content, and even though people may add bad content, they may also add good content (and believe it or not, there is functionality that makes people able to remove bad edits!). You're applying the problems of the large wikis to the smaller ones, which is not really appropriate, because they are on completely different levels. Sure, the smaller wikis have problems as well, but they are very different from the problems enwiki and dewiki are having.
2008/12/1 Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk
Have you forgotten that these are WIKIS we are talking about? It's not just a matter of translation: the technology isn't there to do it automatically and we don't have the manpower do it manually. Even if the technology were there, it's a WIKI. Unlike your friend's translations, our content can drastically deteriorate and become useless overnight if nobody's watching it.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:58:54 +0100 From: gerard.meijssen@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
Hoi, EMC2 is a company who sells storage solutions to big companies. I was at
a
presentation of their documentation manager. He informed his audience
that
the people who buy their products invariably state that they prefer the English documentation. They always get the translations as well. The
benefit
to EMC2 is that they sell more products. The translation of their documentation adds pennies to the pound in costs, costs that are easily offset by the increased sales.
The point is that people understand things better when they are addressed
in
their own language EVEN when they can read the language that is foreign
to
them. Thanks, GerardM
2008/11/30 geni geniice@gmail.com
2008/11/30 effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com:
Because bear in mind, especially in those languages, a complemented
work
of
human knowledge really adds something. In the large languages, we
already
had encyclopediae and dictionaries of good quality. Wikipedia is
better
sure, and has improved our lives. But now just imagine that you are
living
in Botswana, and on school (if you're lucky) there is very little
material
available... and now there is an encyclopedia... In YOUR language!
English is an official language of Botswana. Quite a lot of African countries move to English or French for education above a certain level.
Even if it only contains 1000 articles,
~102 articles currently.
you can already learn a lot from it. You can improve your knowledge, and increase the odds in competition with the western world.
What is Tswana for mass spectrometry (looking at the translations for that term across European languages is mildly amusing) ? There are large areas where if you don't speak english you can't operate in that area. There is nothing wikimedia can do about this. Highly questionable if we would even want to.
This doesn't mean we should give up on many languages but it does mean that we have to accept that the educated people from those countries may not want to use them and there is a significant risk of them becoming POV forks.
-- geni
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On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 11:48 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
What is Tswana for mass spectrometry (looking at the translations for that term across European languages is mildly amusing) ? There are large areas where if you don't speak english you can't operate in that area. There is nothing wikimedia can do about this. Highly questionable if we would even want to.
This doesn't mean we should give up on many languages but it does mean that we have to accept that the educated people from those countries may not want to use them and there is a significant risk of them becoming POV forks.
What is relatively unknown to foreigners is that even English (or any other word language as lingua franca) is preferable language for education, the most of people under ~18-20 and above 50 are very bad in that lingua franca, no matter what the region is. Simply, foreigners usually don't talk with people who don't know English (or other world language). Even we assume that the upper limit for knowing English will raise, it is hardly to assume that lower limit will go significantly down. This is especially important because pidgins (let's say, WoW or CS pidgins) locally are not translated to English and then to a native language, but directly into a native language. (To give a plastic example: "ASAP" will not be translated as "as soon as possible" and then into a local language phrase, but directly to a local language phrase.)
So, if you are able to make an internet pidgin-English project, it could work for younger. However, en.wp is not working. To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong. Serbian Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles than en.wp.
Completely other question is that a very small specter of population is able to participate on en.wp, even in not so poor countries.
Other thing is inside of multilingual developing countries which decided to use English in the educational system. But, it makes another problem: significant part of population won't get even basic education if it is in foreign language (cf. literacy level in Arab and other Muslim countries, even the richest: only very rich, socialist and not so populated Libya has 82% of literacy, while not so rich [per capita] and not socialist Iran and Pakistan have 82% and 86%; even extremely rich UAE and Saudi Arabia have 79% and [around] 80%).
2008/12/1 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
So, if you are able to make an internet pidgin-English project, it could work for younger. However, en.wp is not working. To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong. Serbian Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles than en.wp.
Serbian isn't a launguage. It's a dialect of the Central South Slavic diasystem and one of the projects I had in mind when I brought up smaller languages becoming POV forks.
You also need to considered the argument beyond wikipedia. The ratio of scientific papers published in english compared to any eastern European language (except to an extent Russian) is very considerable. This is not something wikipedia can do anything about. Even if such languages do get more extensive beyond a certain point they will be relying on English references.
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 2:25 AM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Serbian isn't a launguage. It's a dialect of the Central South Slavic diasystem and one of the projects I had in mind when I brought up smaller languages becoming POV forks.
Saying that something is not a language is a strong claim. Talking about one standard language as a dialect is a non-scientific claim. Serbian language is one of the standard varieties based on Eastern-Herzegovian dialect of Shtokavian diasystem. Also, it is not based on Central South Slavic diasystem, because standard Serbian language is not based on Torlakian, Chakavian nor Kaykavian.
You also need to considered the argument beyond wikipedia. The ratio of scientific papers published in english compared to any eastern European language (except to an extent Russian) is very considerable. This is not something wikipedia can do anything about. Even if such languages do get more extensive beyond a certain point they will be relying on English references.
Yes. This is true.
Hoi, Interesting but off topic. At issue is that many parts exist that are known to make MediaWiki more usable. We need to make MediaWiki more usable and all it takes is to apply the lessons learned by applying the results of the usability studies performed by UNICEF.
We only have to learn about their findings and apply them to our projects. What is needed is for us to consider what it would take to make this happen on our projects. It does include several opportunities; the templates for new articles allow us to promote structure on articles, the functionality itself promotes participation. I do argue that our projects will benefit tremendously from this low hanging fruit.
I would like to see the lessons learned by UNICEF as soon as possible because it will give our MediaWiki software a new lease on life. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/1 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 2:25 AM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Serbian isn't a launguage. It's a dialect of the Central South Slavic diasystem and one of the projects I had in mind when I brought up smaller languages becoming POV forks.
Saying that something is not a language is a strong claim. Talking about one standard language as a dialect is a non-scientific claim. Serbian language is one of the standard varieties based on Eastern-Herzegovian dialect of Shtokavian diasystem. Also, it is not based on Central South Slavic diasystem, because standard Serbian language is not based on Torlakian, Chakavian nor Kaykavian.
You also need to considered the argument beyond wikipedia. The ratio of scientific papers published in english compared to any eastern European language (except to an extent Russian) is very considerable. This is not something wikipedia can do anything about. Even if such languages do get more extensive beyond a certain point they will be relying on English references.
Yes. This is true.
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On Monday 01 December 2008 02:25:10 geni wrote:
2008/12/1 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
So, if you are able to make an internet pidgin-English project, it could work for younger. However, en.wp is not working. To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong. Serbian Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles than en.wp.
Serbian isn't a launguage. It's a dialect of the Central South Slavic diasystem and one of the projects I had in mind when I brought up smaller languages becoming POV forks.
Central South Slavic diasystem is not a language and as such can not have dialects.
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 7:27 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
On Monday 01 December 2008 02:25:10 geni wrote:
2008/12/1 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
So, if you are able to make an internet pidgin-English project, it could work for younger. However, en.wp is not working. To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong. Serbian Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles than en.wp.
Serbian isn't a launguage. It's a dialect of the Central South Slavic diasystem and one of the projects I had in mind when I brought up smaller languages becoming POV forks.
Central South Slavic diasystem is not a language and as such can not have dialects.
:) Nikola, diasystem is by lexical formation a system of dialects. BTW, to follow Yaroslav: article [[diasystem]] at en.wp is laughable ;)
Milos Rancic wrote:
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 7:27 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
On Monday 01 December 2008 02:25:10 geni wrote:
2008/12/1 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
So, if you are able to make an internet pidgin-English project, it could work for younger. However, en.wp is not working. To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong. Serbian Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles than en.wp.
Serbian isn't a launguage. It's a dialect of the Central South Slavic diasystem and one of the projects I had in mind when I brought up smaller languages becoming POV forks.
Central South Slavic diasystem is not a language and as such can not have dialects.
:) Nikola, diasystem is by lexical formation a system of dialects.
Yes, but the dialects are not dialects of the diasystem, they are dialects in the diasystem.
The point is that the quality of the vast majority of scientific-related articles even in English Wikipedia is laughable anyway. This is a much more general problem that the language division.
Cheers Yaroslav
You also need to considered the argument beyond wikipedia. The ratio of scientific papers published in english compared to any eastern European language (except to an extent Russian) is very considerable. This is not something wikipedia can do anything about. Even if such languages do get more extensive beyond a certain point they will be relying on English references.
-- geni
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On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 11:11 PM, Christiano Moreschi < moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
Do we care that 80%
of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM
No. Why should we? Nobody actually reads shit like the albanian wikibooks (doesn't matter if that doesn't exist, you get my point). Such projects exist purely the monomaniacal benefit of the editor(s), not any readers. Let them all fail, with the exception of Wikipedias en,fr,de,ru,etc + wikt and commons.
I fail to see the purpose of this response except "rm -rf -exclude:en,fr,de,ru,etc + wikt and commons" which //isn't going to happen//.
I care and I think we should have a usability expert. but I wouldn't call it failure (as i understand failure means something that used to work and now deteriorates or stops), it is more of a project that didn't start yet.
Hoi, Given that UNICEF has done proper usability studies. Given that they have measured the success of the changes they made. We can be aware of the lessons that were learned in this way. We can adopt the changes and learn how it affects *our *smaller projects. When we cooperate with UNICEF, when we apply the lessons learned we can expect to do better.
When 80% are considered to be a failure, when we identify a major reason why, when we apply the lessons learned and these projects still fail, it is not because of something that we could have done. I am raising awareness of the issues we know we have with usability. I am involved in getting these extensions tested so that people can safely adopt them. I urge the WMF to allow projects to have the benefit of improved usability.
When projects choose to improve usability, we will get metrics on how this makes a difference. We may learn what approaches work in which cultures and not in others. It would be so cool if we could discuss these things because we have this experience. Thanks, GerardM
2008/11/30 Mohamed Magdy mohamed.m.k@gmail.com
On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 11:11 PM, Christiano Moreschi < moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
Do we care that 80%
of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM
No. Why should we? Nobody actually reads shit like the albanian wikibooks (doesn't matter if that doesn't exist, you get my point). Such projects exist purely the monomaniacal benefit of the editor(s), not any readers.
Let
them all fail, with the exception of Wikipedias en,fr,de,ru,etc + wikt
and
commons.
I fail to see the purpose of this response except "rm -rf -exclude:en,fr,de,ru,etc + wikt and commons" which //isn't going to happen//.
I care and I think we should have a usability expert. but I wouldn't call it failure (as i understand failure means something that used to work and now deteriorates or stops), it is more of a project that didn't start yet.
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
When 80% are considered to be a failure,
We might have failures, but "80% of projects" is not a useful metric. As we define new projects, such as the Swahili Wikinews, Swahili Wikiversity and Swahili Wikispecies, there is no end to the number of failures we might have. We can easily reach 98% failures. So we cannot use the improvement of this metric as our goal.
To further illustrate this, by closing down the failing 80% of WMF projects, the remaining projects would be 100% successful.
So please use statistics and metrics that make sense.
Hoi, Another way to approach the number would be; currently 80% of our projects are failing. Improved usability may mean that this number goes down to 60% maybe even 40%. This would be a big improvement. I am not in favour of creating 100% success by excluding others until it is necessary and until out options to improve their chances of success. Given the aims of the WMF, projects that are currently failing are still projects where the WMF intends to do well. As the costs of the failing projects is negligible there is no real reason to remove them. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/2 Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
When 80% are considered to be a failure,
We might have failures, but "80% of projects" is not a useful metric. As we define new projects, such as the Swahili Wikinews, Swahili Wikiversity and Swahili Wikispecies, there is no end to the number of failures we might have. We can easily reach 98% failures. So we cannot use the improvement of this metric as our goal.
To further illustrate this, by closing down the failing 80% of WMF projects, the remaining projects would be 100% successful.
So please use statistics and metrics that make sense.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Another way to approach the number would be; currently 80% of our projects are failing. Improved usability may mean that this number goes down to 60% maybe even 40%. This would be a big improvement.
Gerard, you're very stubborn, even when you're wrong. Look, I'm not against improving projects. I'm not against you. I'm just against using poorly defined metrics for measuring improvement.
A working metric could be the total number (not the share) of successful projects. Do we have 130 successful projects today? (This is just a quick guess: 80 languages of Wikipedia having more than 10,000 articles, plus 50 other projects.) Maybe we can have 170 next year. This metric is not affected by whether or not Swahili Wikinews (supposedly yet another failed project) gets started. Let's study whether the page creation extensions can make that number 160 or 180.
To further illustrate this, by closing down the failing 80% of WMF projects, the remaining projects would be 100% successful.
So please use statistics and metrics that make sense.
Lars, have you read my message today in the other thread? I argue that dividing stuff by projects is not a good metric to determine what is successful and what is not.
Cheers Yaroslav
Hello Gerard,
I agree with you, making MediaWiki more usable for beginners is more and more a pressing problem of ours.
Ting
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, Regularly I hear people say that Wikipedia is failing. When you then listen, there are all kinds of good reasons why Wikipedia is failing. Quality is low, issues with living persons, pov pushers a long litany of woes are all grounds to predict the imminent demise of Wikipedia. While all these issues may be grounds for concern, it is hardly indicative of failure. To me they are indicative of a wildly successful project coping with everything that is a consequence of success. I am of the opinion that most of our projects would love to have the same problems, the same issues, the same success as the few project that do well.
For most of our projects a lack of content, a lack of community ensure that the project is irrelevant. No growth, no interest is more killing then all the woes that our big projects suffer from. At Wikimania 2008 a presentation was given by developers from UNICEF who had done proper usability studies. They found that 100% of their newbie testsubjects were not able to create a new article.
This is serious. This explains why so many of our projects fail. We do not invite collaboration because people do not know how to. They do not know how to EVEN when they are explicitly invited to create a new article as they were in this research.
At the Wikimedia Conference Nederland, Jan-Bart de Vreede indicated in his speech that Kennisnet is interested in implementing the UNICEF extensions. These extensions are now localisable in any language at Betawiki. At ExtensionTesting, all the extensions have been tested against stable releases. Bugs were identified and some bugs were fixed. As a consequence it is likely that some more MediaWiki installations will benefit from research.
It seems obvious to people who deal with small projects that usability is one of the big issue when it comes to the moribunt status of our small projects. The question I put to you, what are we going to do to first agree that this is an issue and then to deal with this issue. Do we care that 80% of our projects are failing? Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 10:43 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
At Wikimania 2008 a presentation was given by developers from UNICEF who had done proper usability studies. They found that 100% of their newbie testsubjects were not able to create a new article.
They must have done something wrong.
If they are right, then it must be an illusion that Wikipedia has several millions of articles.
I find the creation of a new article very easy. On the other hand, adding a link somewhere that says "create a new article" won't hurt.
Hoi, I am sure that you and I have learned to create new articles. In the usability study, people who were completely new to MediaWiki were asked to perform well described tasks. All testsubjects were unable to create new articles. They did nothing wrong, they just could not figure out how to do this.
These tests were recorded on video and analysed by usability experts. Consequently the results are relevant and provide the best explanation that I have had so far why so many of our projects are failing. The good news is that the issue that has been identified is one that we can remedy. The even better news is that the UNICEF developers have created extensions that have been proven to make a difference. We only have to understand their results and apply the knowledge gained. Obviously we will want to ensure that this software complies with our standards, but this is something that we have the expertise for. This is a clear win-win situation as UNICEF stands to gain their functionality adopted by the WMF and consequently have less of a maintenance issue. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/1 Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@gmail.com
On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 10:43 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
At Wikimania 2008 a presentation was given by developers from UNICEF who had done proper usability
studies.
They found that 100% of their newbie testsubjects were not able to create
a
new article.
They must have done something wrong.
If they are right, then it must be an illusion that Wikipedia has several millions of articles.
I find the creation of a new article very easy. On the other hand, adding a link somewhere that says "create a new article" won't hurt.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni
heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com
"We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
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Wow, just wow... I feel really sick after reading some of the messages of this tread.
Maybe the promotion of minority languages is not directly a goal of WMF but it's a must.
2008/12/1 Fajro faigos@gmail.com:
Wow, just wow... I feel really sick after reading some of the messages of this tread.
Maybe the promotion of minority languages is not directly a goal of WMF but it's a must.
No. You can argue for the tolerance of minority languages but actively promoting them conflicts with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
2008/12/1 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2008/12/1 Fajro faigos@gmail.com:
Wow, just wow... I feel really sick after reading some of the messages of this tread.
Maybe the promotion of minority languages is not directly a goal of WMF but it's a must.
No. You can argue for the tolerance of minority languages but actively promoting them conflicts with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
Why is that? I thought the main goal of Wikipedia was to "build free encyclopedias in *all* languages of the world" [1].
Patricio
[1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects#Wikipedia
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 2:08 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
No. You can argue for the tolerance of minority languages but actively promoting them conflicts with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
How?
Do you edit wikipedia to give "Free Access To All Human Knowledge" only to the educated elite?
-- △ ℱajro △ IM: fajro@jabber.org Lernu! - http://www.lernu.net Wikimedia Argentina - http://www.wikimedia.org.ar
2008/12/1 Fajro faigos@gmail.com:
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 2:08 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
No. You can argue for the tolerance of minority languages but actively promoting them conflicts with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
How?
Do you edit wikipedia to give "Free Access To All Human Knowledge" only to the educated elite?
"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world " first line of the mission statement. By actively promoting minority languages you lock more people into them which is not consistent with trying to empower them.
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 2:19 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2008/12/1 Fajro faigos@gmail.com:
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 2:08 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
No. You can argue for the tolerance of minority languages but actively promoting them conflicts with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
How?
Do you edit wikipedia to give "Free Access To All Human Knowledge" only to the educated elite?
"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world " first line of the mission statement. By actively promoting minority languages you lock more people into them which is not consistent with trying to empower them.
WTF???
Some people really need read more about cultural diversity and linguistic rights
2008/12/1 Fajro faigos@gmail.com:
WTF???
Some people really need read more about cultural diversity
Bible belt America does not share a culture with say Perth or indeed much of New York.
and linguistic rights
No such thing.
Language can be a tool for control. With English this is hard. There is simply too much of it out there an English speakers move around too much. It isn't really practical to keep them out. But if your general population doesn't speak English that doesn't matter. By actively promoting minority languages you increase the longevity and frequency of such situations. A population that does not speak English is one that it is fairly easy for those in power (be it dictators of tribal elders or religious leaders) to control the information flow to. And wikipedia can do nothing about that. A single data source is too easy to block.
So we tolerate smaller languages or languages with lower levels of existing information but should not go as far as actively promoting them. For the time being we accept that yes they are what we are going to have to use if we want to work with such groups (and heh even North Korea has a hard time dealing with Korean speakers among it tourists). But that does not mean we should make any attempt to promote them.
2008/12/1 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2008/12/1 Fajro faigos@gmail.com:
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 2:08 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
No. You can argue for the tolerance of minority languages but actively promoting them conflicts with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
How?
Do you edit wikipedia to give "Free Access To All Human Knowledge" only to the educated elite?
"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world " first line of the mission statement. By actively promoting minority languages you lock more people into them which is not consistent with trying to empower them.
A curious statement, wich I strongly disagree. Promoting the development of minority languages means to promote new skills in the people who talks this languages, to help them to build online content in this languages, to put knowledge closer to this people, etc. etc, and all this means to "empower and engage people around the world".
Patricio
geni wrote:
2008/12/1 Fajro faigos@gmail.com:
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 2:08 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
No. You can argue for the tolerance of minority languages but actively promoting them conflicts with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
How?
Do you edit wikipedia to give "Free Access To All Human Knowledge" only to the educated elite?
"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world " first line of the mission statement. By actively promoting minority languages you lock more people into them which is not consistent with trying to empower them.
I do not share geni's views at all.
2008/12/1 Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia-inc.com:
geni wrote:
2008/12/1 Fajro faigos@gmail.com:
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 2:08 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
No. You can argue for the tolerance of minority languages but actively promoting them conflicts with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
How?
Do you edit wikipedia to give "Free Access To All Human Knowledge" only to the educated elite?
"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world " first line of the mission statement. By actively promoting minority languages you lock more people into them which is not consistent with trying to empower them.
I do not share geni's views at all.
It doesn't seem that anyone does...
Geni wrote:
"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world " first line of the mission statement. By actively promoting minority languages you lock more people into them which is not consistent with trying to empower them.
I wrote:
I do not share geni's views at all.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
It doesn't seem that anyone does...
I should add at the same time that I think that it is a good thing for people to try to learn a relevant global language in addition to their local language, with the choice depending upon personal context.
In many parts of the world and for many people, English is an excellent choice of a second language. In other parts of the world (Francophone Africa for example), French is an excellent choice. Chinese might be good for some people. Russian for others. Hindi for others. There are many variables.
And I hope that Wikipedia is helpful to people both in learning about the facts of reality (usually most comfortably done in your mother tongue) and in learning another language. I don't see these goals as being in competition at all, but rather mutually reinforcing.
--Jimbo
Jimbo: Thank you for your comments. As a person who manages a small wiki project and two language forks from it, I found some of the comments very disturbing... almost frightening that such exist. Your comments re-affirm my confidence in the Wikimedia Foundation and its purpose.
Thanks.
Mike
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 1:24 PM, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia-inc.com wrote:
Geni wrote:
"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world " first line of the mission statement. By actively promoting minority languages you lock more people into them which is not consistent with trying to empower them.
I wrote:
I do not share geni's views at all.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
It doesn't seem that anyone does...
I should add at the same time that I think that it is a good thing for people to try to learn a relevant global language in addition to their local language, with the choice depending upon personal context.
In many parts of the world and for many people, English is an excellent choice of a second language. In other parts of the world (Francophone Africa for example), French is an excellent choice. Chinese might be good for some people. Russian for others. Hindi for others. There are many variables.
And I hope that Wikipedia is helpful to people both in learning about the facts of reality (usually most comfortably done in your mother tongue) and in learning another language. I don't see these goals as being in competition at all, but rather mutually reinforcing.
--Jimbo
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I'd like to ecco (is that an eEnglish word..?) Michael Finney here. Most people who engage them self in a small language wikimedia projects will sooner or later participate in projects like en:wp and commons as well - and thus both learn more about the "facts of reality" as well as communicating with others in a (for them) foreign language.
They may of course also learn the not so pleasant fact of reality that native English speakers unfortunately sometimes come across as a rather arrogant lot (an attitude also unfortunately often also adapted by dutch/scandinavians etc who often are more comfortable using English than other language groups - I've been arrogant myself at times)
Finn Rindahl (mainly nowiki&commons)
2008/12/1 Michael Finney finney.md@gmail.com
Jimbo: Thank you for your comments. As a person who manages a small wiki project and two language forks from it, I found some of the comments very disturbing... almost frightening that such exist. Your comments re-affirm my confidence in the Wikimedia Foundation and its purpose.
Thanks.
Mike
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 1:24 PM, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia-inc.com wrote:
Geni wrote:
"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world " first line of the mission statement. By actively promoting minority languages you lock more people into them which is not consistent with trying to empower them.
I wrote:
I do not share geni's views at all.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
It doesn't seem that anyone does...
I should add at the same time that I think that it is a good thing for people to try to learn a relevant global language in addition to their local language, with the choice depending upon personal context.
In many parts of the world and for many people, English is an excellent choice of a second language. In other parts of the world (Francophone Africa for example), French is an excellent choice. Chinese might be good for some people. Russian for others. Hindi for others. There are many variables.
And I hope that Wikipedia is helpful to people both in learning about the facts of reality (usually most comfortably done in your mother tongue) and in learning another language. I don't see these goals as being in competition at all, but rather mutually reinforcing.
--Jimbo
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2008/12/1 Finn Rindahl finnrindwiki@gmail.com:
I'd like to ecco (is that an eEnglish word..?) Michael Finney here.
I think you mean "echo" - to repeat what he said.
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 1:44 PM, Finn Rindahl finnrindwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I'd like to ecco (is that an eEnglish word..?) Michael Finney here. Most people who engage them self in a small language wikimedia projects will sooner or later participate in projects like en:wp and commons as well - and thus both learn more about the "facts of reality" as well as communicating with others in a (for them) foreign language.
An also a fair share of people who initially engage into enwip ant he alike, eventually decide to migrate to smaller projects.
@Pedro :Yep, it's a two way interaction that I believe benefits all projects (sort of human interwiki)
@Thomas:Echo would be the English word, thanks. "Ecco" however is also correct eEnglish, ref. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Guerilla_non-eEnglish_spelling_and_grammar_ca.... (Note to self: Irony should be avvoided in online communication, especially when writing foreignly)
@Gerard: Yes, there will be a lot of loud voices, but in the end we'll manage to work out this as an improvement to help new (and perhaps older) users as well. There was A LOT of load voices at Commons when (what I still hope is) a more userfriendly uploadsystem was launched, but it seems to be working just fine ;)
We may get more nonsense articles going straight to speedy deletion, but the way to raise the quality of wikip/media is certainly not to avvoid maiking it easier for people to edit,
Finn R
2008/12/1 Pedro Sanchez pdsanchez@gmail.com
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 1:44 PM, Finn Rindahl finnrindwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I'd like to ecco (is that an eEnglish word..?) Michael Finney here. Most people who engage them self in a small language wikimedia projects will sooner or later participate in projects like en:wp and commons as well -
and
thus both learn more about the "facts of reality" as well as
communicating
with others in a (for them) foreign language.
An also a fair share of people who initially engage into enwip ant he alike, eventually decide to migrate to smaller projects.
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Michael Finney wrote:
Thank you for your comments. As a person who manages a small wiki project and two language forks from it, I found some of the comments very disturbing... almost frightening that such exist. Your comments re-affirm my confidence in the Wikimedia Foundation and its purpose.
I certainly don't see it as "frightening" that a debate over the status of small minority languages *exists*. One always has, and continues to exist, in many countries, with the prevailing views differing greatly around the world. I personally come from a family whose native tongue was Pontian Greek, a language that is quickly becoming extinct, and most of whose users actively decided to switch to modern Greek, partly in order to reduce ethnic strife between different "kinds" of Greeks and make for a more unified modern nation. There are of course negative aspects to that approach, just as there are positive and negative aspects to any aspect of assimilation versus maintenance of differences.
-Mark
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 5:24 PM, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia-inc.com wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
It doesn't seem that anyone does...
I should add at the same time that I think that it is a good thing for people to try to learn a relevant global language in addition to their local language, with the choice depending upon personal context.
In many parts of the world and for many people, English is an excellent choice of a second language. In other parts of the world (Francophone Africa for example), French is an excellent choice. Chinese might be good for some people. Russian for others. Hindi for others. There are many variables.
Don't forget Esperanto.
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 5:29 PM, Michael Finney finney.md@gmail.com wrote:
Jimbo: Thank you for your comments. As a person who manages a small wiki project and two language forks from it, I found some of the comments very disturbing... almost frightening that such exist. Your comments re-affirm my confidence in the Wikimedia Foundation and its purpose.
Some of those comments was openly promoting ethnocide and linguistic discrimination and aparently nobody noticed it.
I knew that wikimedia was a little anglocentric, but this is too much.
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 6:15 PM, Fajro faigos@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 2:08 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
No. You can argue for the tolerance of minority languages but actively promoting them conflicts with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
How?
Do you edit wikipedia to give "Free Access To All Human Knowledge" only to the educated elite?
Promoting minority languages certainly does not conflict with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
But it is *not* one of Wikimedia's stated objectives. Wikimedia provides a platform where minority languages can develop; it's the people who can write these languages that do the actual development work.
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 6:19 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
By actively promoting minority languages you lock more people into them which is not consistent with trying to empower them.
"Getting empowered" is not equal to "learning English".
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@gmail.com wrote:
"Getting empowered" is not equal to "learning English".
The two are not equal, to be sure. But, at the risk of sounding pugilistic, I will say that there probably is a positive correlation between knowing a more "popular" language and knowledge empowerment.
Even if this is true, the foundation is more interested in getting people involved (which means targeting native languages) then in trying to "convert" people to more popular (and possibly more empowering) languages. To do the second task we would still want to create projects in small languages so we could write learning resources to teach people the big languages.
--Andrew Whitworth
GerardM - what steps need to be taken to begin testing and adapting the UNICEF usability extensions? Where would be a good project to begin - perhaps the Simple English Wikipedia, if that community is amenable? That its in English might make development easier, and a more usable interface might fit with the philosophy of the Simple wiki.
Milos - you wrote: "To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong. Serbian Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles than en.wp." Can I ask how you arrived at this change of mind? It makes sense to me that a reference in the common language of Serbia is more useful than one that is not, but since you originally believed the opposite I'm curious to know what data changed your mind.
Moreschi - What you advocate is basically cultural imperialism, which is a recipe for conflict and disruption - not education. Making knowledge available to as many people as possible is the goal; if those people don't speak English, they should not be excluded. As others have noted, it is much easier and much more in line with our goal to find contributors who can build suitable references in all languages. To your point that these references are likely to have poor quality anyway - I'm not sure that makes sense logically. A small community does not necessarily equal poor quality content; I imagine that the size of the community correlates with the volume of content, and while there are less people to police quality issues there is less content to police.
Nathan
2008/12/1 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com:
Milos - you wrote: "To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong. Serbian Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles than en.wp." Can I ask how you arrived at this change of mind? It makes sense to me that a reference in the common language of Serbia is more useful than one that is not, but since you originally believed the opposite I'm curious to know what data changed your mind.
I don't know how exactly Milos arrived at this conclusion, but i have a half-educated guess.
<original-research-and-educated-guesses> Many - quite possibly most - readers arrive at Wikipedia through a search engine. Now the question is - which language they use to search the web. It's quite natural that a significant number of people in Serbia will search the web in Serbian. The same goes for Israel/Hebrew and Russia/Russian.
The problem is with less privileged languages. Belarusian is official in Belarus and the (arguable) statistics say that most people there consider it to be their native language, but in practice Russian is considerably more popular in the published media, so when they google for something, they do it in Russian, because they don't expect to find anything useful in Belarusian.
Or take Hindi. The second most spoken language in the world and the main official language of a country where many people are online. (1% of India's population is MANY.) Yet the Hindi Wikipedia has less than 30,000 articles (if i read the Indic digits correctly...)
Now, these are languages which have millions of speakers, rich literature and an official status; when it comes to languages which are even less privileged, people go straight to the English WP (or French or Spanish.) </original-research-and-educated-guesses>
Speaking in Linguistic terms, it is a question of [[Pragmatics]].
Hoi, The software has been tested but not all extensions are considered ready for WMF production. I am establishing contacts with, among others, people at UNICEF to make sure that we identify the outstanding issues carefully and fix them efficiently. Given that the CreatePage extension requires changes to the skin, it may make sense to consider using a superset of monobook (I do not know how feasible this is).
Given that the software is already being localised at Betawiki, we do not need to restrict ourselves to English. I understand that UNICEF uses some of their software in Swahili :) I would love to consider Swahili for this ... Kennisnet is interested in this functionality, that would make Dutch an option. It needs to be clear that it is not only Wikipedia projects that will benefit.
The benefits from a more useable interface have little to do with a "simple" approach. Newbies are not able to contribute. Our need for more contributors and content is most dire in our smallest projects. Personally I am not that interested in using "simple" as a test environment. From my perspective, it should be there for all the projects that want it. Obviously, when this extension is localised first, it will be more effective.
When we are to test this in a Wikimedia Wiki, we need to get involvement from Brion. It would help a lot when the WMF actively takes part in this collaboration and make usability a priority. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/1 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com
GerardM - what steps need to be taken to begin testing and adapting the UNICEF usability extensions? Where would be a good project to begin - perhaps the Simple English Wikipedia, if that community is amenable? That its in English might make development easier, and a more usable interface might fit with the philosophy of the Simple wiki.
Milos - you wrote: "To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong. Serbian Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles than en.wp." Can I ask how you arrived at this change of mind? It makes sense to me that a reference in the common language of Serbia is more useful than one that is not, but since you originally believed the opposite I'm curious to know what data changed your mind.
Moreschi - What you advocate is basically cultural imperialism, which is a recipe for conflict and disruption - not education. Making knowledge available to as many people as possible is the goal; if those people don't speak English, they should not be excluded. As others have noted, it is much easier and much more in line with our goal to find contributors who can build suitable references in all languages. To your point that these references are likely to have poor quality anyway - I'm not sure that makes sense logically. A small community does not necessarily equal poor quality content; I imagine that the size of the community correlates with the volume of content, and while there are less people to police quality issues there is less content to police.
Nathan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Thanks for that, Gerard. In other terms I suppose my question would be this: You've identified a problem (usability, particularly in languages with the smallest or least technologically wealthy communities) and a partial solution (usability extensions developed by UNICEF). Your post, though, had the tone of hoping that readers would offer assistance of some sort - so what assistance would you like? Was your post aimed primarily at the Board, or is there something that other people could be doing as well?
Nathan
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.comwrote:
Hoi, The software has been tested but not all extensions are considered ready for WMF production. I am establishing contacts with, among others, people at UNICEF to make sure that we identify the outstanding issues carefully and fix them efficiently. Given that the CreatePage extension requires changes to the skin, it may make sense to consider using a superset of monobook (I do not know how feasible this is).
Given that the software is already being localised at Betawiki, we do not need to restrict ourselves to English. I understand that UNICEF uses some of their software in Swahili :) I would love to consider Swahili for this ... Kennisnet is interested in this functionality, that would make Dutch an option. It needs to be clear that it is not only Wikipedia projects that will benefit.
The benefits from a more useable interface have little to do with a "simple" approach. Newbies are not able to contribute. Our need for more contributors and content is most dire in our smallest projects. Personally I am not that interested in using "simple" as a test environment. From my perspective, it should be there for all the projects that want it. Obviously, when this extension is localised first, it will be more effective.
When we are to test this in a Wikimedia Wiki, we need to get involvement from Brion. It would help a lot when the WMF actively takes part in this collaboration and make usability a priority. Thanks, GerardM
Hoi, When usability improvements are to be implemented, it will change the dynamics of a project. It is easy to argue why the smaller projects need more content and more contributors. It is also easy to argue the same for the bigger and biggest projects. When a skin becomes available with a BIG button saying "Create new article", there will be loud voices explaining why it is a bad idea. Arguments that make sense up to a point.
It is important to start thinking in terms of: when it becomes easier to contribute to a MediaWiki project, what are the implications. I am of the opinion that this will be on balance beneficial. But that is just me.
I have not been addressing the board. I am grateful if the board takes an interest but I would prefer it when the WMF organisation takes up the baton. At most and at best the board can give usability more of a priority, but I would not be surprised if the organisation is ready to give usability more priority without Board involvement. The timing would not be that bad as the new developers are getting experienced and I expect that most of the work associated with the fund raiser is done.
If you are a developer, I would LOVE you to have a look at the code. I would love to see proposals for a skin that does include a "CreatePage" button. I would love you to fix the bugs that have been identified by MinuteElectron. I am sure that there is enough that you can do to make usability an issue that we are now starting to address. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/1 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com
Thanks for that, Gerard. In other terms I suppose my question would be this: You've identified a problem (usability, particularly in languages with the smallest or least technologically wealthy communities) and a partial solution (usability extensions developed by UNICEF). Your post, though, had the tone of hoping that readers would offer assistance of some sort - so what assistance would you like? Was your post aimed primarily at the Board, or is there something that other people could be doing as well?
Nathan
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.comwrote:
Hoi, The software has been tested but not all extensions are considered ready for WMF production. I am establishing contacts with, among others, people at UNICEF to make sure that we identify the outstanding issues carefully and fix them efficiently. Given that the CreatePage extension requires
changes
to the skin, it may make sense to consider using a superset of monobook
(I
do not know how feasible this is).
Given that the software is already being localised at Betawiki, we do not need to restrict ourselves to English. I understand that UNICEF uses some of their software in Swahili :) I would love to consider Swahili for this
...
Kennisnet is interested in this functionality, that would make Dutch an option. It needs to be clear that it is not only Wikipedia projects that will benefit.
The benefits from a more useable interface have little to do with a "simple" approach. Newbies are not able to contribute. Our need for more contributors and content is most dire in our smallest projects. Personally I am not
that
interested in using "simple" as a test environment. From my perspective,
it
should be there for all the projects that want it. Obviously, when this extension is localised first, it will be more effective.
When we are to test this in a Wikimedia Wiki, we need to get involvement from Brion. It would help a lot when the WMF actively takes part in this collaboration and make usability a priority. Thanks, GerardM
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2008/12/1 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, The software has been tested but not all extensions are considered ready for WMF production. I am establishing contacts with, among others, people at UNICEF to make sure that we identify the outstanding issues carefully and fix them efficiently. Given that the CreatePage extension requires changes to the skin, it may make sense to consider using a superset of monobook (I do not know how feasible this is).
We need to find a way to make this kind of usability tests a more regular thing. There was one done in german way back that highlighted the issue of image uploads but I have no idea if the current commons upload form and and english upload wizard help with that.
Hoi, There is no point in usability studies when the lessons learned are not applied. At the Boston Wikimania there was another person who had done studies on usability and MediaWiki. She even presented about it at the "Hacker days"...
Given the current opportunity, we should make the most of it. We should improve our usability and learn from the existing usability studies. They are far more relevant to us then most of the other studies performed on us. These studies help us to do better, to be more inclusive, to grow our projects.
As to Commons, it is effectively useless to the people that do not speak English. There is a proof of concept solution to this. In my opinion, it does not make sense to ask people to upload to Commons if the images are lost once loaded because for them there is no way to find these pictures again. So while the wizard may help load the pictures and provide license info, they do not solve the more important problem. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/1 geni geniice@gmail.com
2008/12/1 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, The software has been tested but not all extensions are considered ready
for
WMF production. I am establishing contacts with, among others, people at UNICEF to make sure that we identify the outstanding issues carefully and fix them efficiently. Given that the CreatePage extension requires
changes
to the skin, it may make sense to consider using a superset of monobook
(I
do not know how feasible this is).
We need to find a way to make this kind of usability tests a more regular thing. There was one done in german way back that highlighted the issue of image uploads but I have no idea if the current commons upload form and and english upload wizard help with that.
-- geni
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2008/12/1 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, There is no point in usability studies when the lessons learned are not applied. At the Boston Wikimania there was another person who had done studies on usability and MediaWiki. She even presented about it at the "Hacker days"...
The problem is the info tends to be around it an easy to access and search form.
As to Commons, it is effectively useless to the people that do not speak English.
Really? Even with the extensive uselang stuff in say german?
Hoi, The Dutch Wikipedia has passed 500.000 articles.. if a seven year old Dutch kid would be looking for a "paard", the child would not get what we have in store when it asks for a "horse" in stead.. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=paard&go=Try+exa... http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Horse
I know of smaller WMF projects where even the admins have given up on Commons.. So yes, Commons is a great project but it has only 3,5 million media files and it does not support other languages like it could and in my opinion should. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/1 geni geniice@gmail.com
2008/12/1 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, There is no point in usability studies when the lessons learned are not applied. At the Boston Wikimania there was another person who had done studies on usability and MediaWiki. She even presented about it at the "Hacker days"...
The problem is the info tends to be around it an easy to access and search form.
As to Commons, it is effectively useless to the people that do not speak English.
Really? Even with the extensive uselang stuff in say german?
-- geni
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2008/12/1 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, The Dutch Wikipedia has passed 500.000 articles.. if a seven year old Dutch kid would be looking for a "paard", the child would not get what we have in store when it asks for a "horse" in stead..
People use the search feature on commons?
I would assume they would click the link at the bottom of
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paard_(dier) and get taken to
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Equus_caballus?uselang=nl
Hoi, Yes they do. Why would there otherwise be a search box ? Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/1 geni geniice@gmail.com
2008/12/1 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, The Dutch Wikipedia has passed 500.000 articles.. if a seven year old
Dutch
kid would be looking for a "paard", the child would not get what we have
in
store when it asks for a "horse" in stead..
People use the search feature on commons?
I would assume they would click the link at the bottom of
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paard_(dier)http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paard_%28dier%29and get taken to
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Equus_caballus?uselang=nl
-- geni
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2008/12/1 geni geniice@gmail.com:
People use the search feature on commons?
I would assume they would click the link at the bottom of
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paard_(dier) and get taken to
This is a valid point, especially when one uses it as a starting point to think about search. It might be feasible to build a search tool on the basis of this existing tagging of Wikipedia articles to Commons media -- and similarly, Wiktionary, Wikinews, and so on. This is an alternative to the notion of one giant ontology that's used for tagging. Instead you would treat a wiki -- any wiki -- as the ontology. So you could do a Wikinews/Commons search for terrorism, a Wiktionary/Commons search for pronunciations, etc. Because the approach would be wiki-agnostic, it would also be language-agnostic, and yield useful results as long as the underlying wiki is large enough and its articles are well tagged to Commons.
What would be the technical requirements of this approach and what would be its disadvantages?
Hoi, When you are to build a system that connects Wikipedia / Wiktionary etc articles to Commons, you are building a system that relies on the articles to exist in the languages you want to get the data from. So it is restricted to the data that you have in the projects. To build this data, I would use the software developed by Daniel Kintzler for his master thesis and expand it for the languages Daniel does not yet support. This approach will work for Wikipedias. What you get is the type of data that can be included in a system that is based on the OmegaWiki notions and that will need a database that is quite similar to OmegaWiki.
With an OmegaWiki implementation, we can include information from languages we do not support within the WMF. Consequently we can provide infromation that is not provided by any of the projects. So, yes you can. However there is more that you can do.
As you may know, in OmegaWiki we demonstrated how to connect to both Commons and Wikipedias. The big advantage it provides that there is no need for connecting to Commons from each Wikipedia article. You only connect from the concept both to Commons and the various Wikipedias.
Yes, OmegaWiki is Open Source and its data is Open Content. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/1 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org
2008/12/1 geni geniice@gmail.com:
People use the search feature on commons?
I would assume they would click the link at the bottom of
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paard_(dier)http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paard_%28dier%29and get taken to
This is a valid point, especially when one uses it as a starting point to think about search. It might be feasible to build a search tool on the basis of this existing tagging of Wikipedia articles to Commons media -- and similarly, Wiktionary, Wikinews, and so on. This is an alternative to the notion of one giant ontology that's used for tagging. Instead you would treat a wiki -- any wiki -- as the ontology. So you could do a Wikinews/Commons search for terrorism, a Wiktionary/Commons search for pronunciations, etc. Because the approach would be wiki-agnostic, it would also be language-agnostic, and yield useful results as long as the underlying wiki is large enough and its articles are well tagged to Commons.
What would be the technical requirements of this approach and what would be its disadvantages?
-- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
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2008/12/1 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
What would be the technical requirements of this approach and what would be its disadvantages?
It would require 1 bot and a copy of whichever wikis you wanted to work from. Just harvest all the links to commons and create those on commons as category redirects (you can also harvest all the redirects that point at the article with the link to commons and create redirecting cats for them as well)
Problems? Maintenance wise it would be tricky.
If you were instead going to build something server side you could use the articles the images are used in as keywords for your search engine but by then we are getting a little beyond my knowledge of search design.
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 6:39 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.comwrote:
Hoi, The software has been tested but not all extensions are considered ready for WMF production. I am establishing contacts with, among others, people at UNICEF to make sure that we identify the outstanding issues carefully and fix them efficiently. Given that the CreatePage extension requires changes to the skin, it may make sense to consider using a superset of monobook (I do not know how feasible this is).
Could you please elaborate on the individual extensions, as to what they do? There are already ways to have inputboxes to create new articles, and to have templates preloaded in to them (the former can be seen on the homepage of the hu.wikinews; the latter I've seen in action on some Wikiproject pages). If it is really only a question of starting an article, maybe instead of working on a new extension we could merely put these kind of inputboxes on the homepages of the new/smaller projects (or teach the community how to do it, and let them decide). I have to confess, though, that I am a bit sceptical about this: Hungarian Wikipedia has no prominent "create article" link on its homepage and there are new articles every day from new users, while Wikiquote has one, and there no more than a dozen new articles in a whole month.
Best regards, Bence Damokos
Given that the software is already being localised at Betawiki, we do not need to restrict ourselves to English. I understand that UNICEF uses some of their software in Swahili :) I would love to consider Swahili for this ... Kennisnet is interested in this functionality, that would make Dutch an option. It needs to be clear that it is not only Wikipedia projects that will benefit.
The benefits from a more useable interface have little to do with a "simple" approach. Newbies are not able to contribute. Our need for more contributors and content is most dire in our smallest projects. Personally I am not that interested in using "simple" as a test environment. From my perspective, it should be there for all the projects that want it. Obviously, when this extension is localised first, it will be more effective.
When we are to test this in a Wikimedia Wiki, we need to get involvement from Brion. It would help a lot when the WMF actively takes part in this collaboration and make usability a priority. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/1 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com
GerardM - what steps need to be taken to begin testing and adapting the UNICEF usability extensions? Where would be a good project to begin - perhaps the Simple English Wikipedia, if that community is amenable? That its in English might make development easier, and a more usable interface might fit with the philosophy of the Simple wiki.
Milos - you wrote: "To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong.
Serbian
Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles than en.wp." Can I ask how you arrived at this change of mind? It makes sense to me that a reference in the common language of Serbia is more useful than one that is not, but since you originally believed the opposite I'm curious to know what data changed your mind.
Moreschi - What you advocate is basically cultural imperialism, which is
a
recipe for conflict and disruption - not education. Making knowledge available to as many people as possible is the goal; if those people
don't
speak English, they should not be excluded. As others have noted, it is much easier and much more in line with our goal to find contributors who can build suitable references in all languages. To your point that these references are likely to have poor quality anyway - I'm not sure that
makes
sense logically. A small community does not necessarily equal poor
quality
content; I imagine that the size of the community correlates with the volume of content, and while there are less people to police quality issues
there
is less content to police.
Nathan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Milos - you wrote: "To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong. Serbian Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles than en.wp." Can I ask how you arrived at this change of mind? It makes sense to me that a reference in the common language of Serbia is more useful than one that is not, but since you originally believed the opposite I'm curious to know what data changed your mind.
I have to make one correction: Usually, when I say "Serbia", I think "Belgrade". My "intuition" is connected to Belgrade and I am not so able to analyze the whole Serbia. Belgrade develops similarly to other European cities, while parts of Serbia may vary significantly regionally. But, including Belgrade's "gravitation area", it includes between 1/4 and 1/3 of population of Serbia (without Kosovo).
I had social bias for a long time. For people around me, which means fairly educated persons between their 20s and 50s, English Wikipedia is indeed the most useful project. When some of them is trying to find informations about [[Earth]], [[Alexander the Great]], [[Amazon]], [[Arthur C. Clarke]], [[Mikhail Bulgakov]], [[Apache HTTP Server]] etc., they are going to en.wp. A number of them are not able to participate actively in English, but they are fully able to understand what is written in one encyclopedic article.
A couple of years passed from the time when I realized that it was my social bias. I think that in 2005 I've started to have this kind of conversations: "Wikipedia is very useful for me!" -- "You mean, Wikipedia in English?" -- "No, Wikipedia in Serbian."
One more personal bias which I had was a reason why I am using one encyclopedia. I am using it to find informations which don't below to something which may be called "a basic set of informations". I am using Wikipedia to find informations which don't below to my general knowledge. So, when I am searching for, let's say, some information from astronomy, I am not going to the articles like [[Moon]] or [[Jupiter]] are, but about newly discovered planets, [[Timeline of the Big Bang]] or [[Ultimate fate of the universe]].
BUT, it seems that the most important role of Wikipedia is not to cover those fields. The most important role is to cover the basic educational fields, where pupils may find informations for their classes. So, even I think that [[Ultimate fate of the universe]] is a very important article, much more important than the article about lesser known Serbian feudal ruler, like [[sr:Grgur Branković]] is, for one pupil who learns history from the 5th grade of primary school (while astronomy is a course just in some of the high schools at, I think, 4th grade), this Serbian feudal ruler is much more important.
There is no article about the ultimate fate of the universe on sr.wp, while there is no article about Grgur Branković on en.wp. Conclusion about usefulness is obvious: for the most of pupils and their parents the article about Grgur Branković may be used (and it is in Serbian), while speculations about the ultimate fate of the universe are comparable with watching Battlestar Galactica or Star Track (and it is in English).
Milos Rancic wrote:
A couple of years passed from the time when I realized that it was my social bias. I think that in 2005 I've started to have this kind of conversations: "Wikipedia is very useful for me!" -- "You mean, Wikipedia in English?" -- "No, Wikipedia in Serbian."
At the Wikipedia Academy conference in Sweden some weeks ago, many of the 100+ participants were librarians or teachers in social sciences, and a smaller number were into natural sciences and technology. All presentations were in Swedish and on the first day's workshops we used the Swedish Wikipedia as our playground. On the second day, one of the presentations was made by an astronomer, Dainis Dravins, who talked about his experience from letting undergraduate college students do their project presentations either as posters or as Wikipedia articles.
This picture is from his lecture, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LA2_Wikipedia_Academy_2008_lecture_b...
Only after a while did it become apparent that he was talking of the English Wikipedia. Some surprised librarian asked "are you now talking of the English Wikipedia?" His answer was something like "yes, the Swedish is almost completely useless" (for advanced astronomy). In the undergraduate astronomy classes he was teaching, all literature is in English. This seemed like an unknown planet to the Swedish librarians. And I guess that their surprise came as an equal surprise to the astronomer.
I think one of the greatest values of Wikipedia Academy is when the attendees get to see each other's reactions to Wikipedia.
Only after a while did it become apparent that he was talking of the English Wikipedia. Some surprised librarian asked "are you now talking of the English Wikipedia?" His answer was something like "yes, the Swedish is almost completely useless" (for advanced astronomy). In the undergraduate astronomy classes he was teaching, all literature is in English. This seemed like an unknown planet to the Swedish librarians. And I guess that their surprise came as an equal surprise to the astronomer.
After eight years of teaching physics at a Dutch university and active participation in scientific activities all over the country, I am still to see a scientific talk given in Dutch.
Cheers Yaroslav
2008/12/3 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
Only after a while did it become apparent that he was talking of the English Wikipedia. Some surprised librarian asked "are you now talking of the English Wikipedia?" His answer was something like "yes, the Swedish is almost completely useless" (for advanced astronomy). In the undergraduate astronomy classes he was teaching, all literature is in English. This seemed like an unknown planet to the Swedish librarians. And I guess that their surprise came as an equal surprise to the astronomer.
After eight years of teaching physics at a Dutch university and active participation in scientific activities all over the country, I am still to see a scientific talk given in Dutch.
en:wp is very much an international Wikipedia, not just for English native speakers at all. This leads to some difficulties (apparently infinite supplies of nationalist POV-pushers in some conflicts, for example), but is almost certainly good for NPOV.
This is no reason to neglect the other Wikipedias - English just happens to be the current lingua franca and may not be in 100 years.
- d.
I agree that creating an article should be much easier. Creating a wysiwyg editor would greatly facilitate that.
It would also help if we promoted a culture where people are invited to create new articles. Many hard code wikipedians seem to have adopted the attitude that red links are ugly - so red links are converted to normal text. But a red link is and should be an invitation to create an article.
2008/12/3 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Milos - you wrote: "To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong.
Serbian
Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles than en.wp." Can I ask how you arrived at this change of mind? It makes sense to me that a reference in the common language of Serbia is more
useful
than one that is not, but since you originally believed the opposite I'm curious to know what data changed your mind.
I have to make one correction: Usually, when I say "Serbia", I think "Belgrade". My "intuition" is connected to Belgrade and I am not so able to analyze the whole Serbia. Belgrade develops similarly to other European cities, while parts of Serbia may vary significantly regionally. But, including Belgrade's "gravitation area", it includes between 1/4 and 1/3 of population of Serbia (without Kosovo).
I had social bias for a long time. For people around me, which means fairly educated persons between their 20s and 50s, English Wikipedia is indeed the most useful project. When some of them is trying to find informations about [[Earth]], [[Alexander the Great]], [[Amazon]], [[Arthur C. Clarke]], [[Mikhail Bulgakov]], [[Apache HTTP Server]] etc., they are going to en.wp. A number of them are not able to participate actively in English, but they are fully able to understand what is written in one encyclopedic article.
A couple of years passed from the time when I realized that it was my social bias. I think that in 2005 I've started to have this kind of conversations: "Wikipedia is very useful for me!" -- "You mean, Wikipedia in English?" -- "No, Wikipedia in Serbian."
One more personal bias which I had was a reason why I am using one encyclopedia. I am using it to find informations which don't below to something which may be called "a basic set of informations". I am using Wikipedia to find informations which don't below to my general knowledge. So, when I am searching for, let's say, some information from astronomy, I am not going to the articles like [[Moon]] or [[Jupiter]] are, but about newly discovered planets, [[Timeline of the Big Bang]] or [[Ultimate fate of the universe]].
BUT, it seems that the most important role of Wikipedia is not to cover those fields. The most important role is to cover the basic educational fields, where pupils may find informations for their classes. So, even I think that [[Ultimate fate of the universe]] is a very important article, much more important than the article about lesser known Serbian feudal ruler, like [[sr:Grgur Branković]] is, for one pupil who learns history from the 5th grade of primary school (while astronomy is a course just in some of the high schools at, I think, 4th grade), this Serbian feudal ruler is much more important.
There is no article about the ultimate fate of the universe on sr.wp, while there is no article about Grgur Branković on en.wp. Conclusion about usefulness is obvious: for the most of pupils and their parents the article about Grgur Branković may be used (and it is in Serbian), while speculations about the ultimate fate of the universe are comparable with watching Battlestar Galactica or Star Track (and it is in English). _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 12/2/08, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
There is no article about the ultimate fate of the universe on sr.wp, while there is no article about Grgur Branković on en.wp. Conclusion about usefulness is obvious: for the most of pupils and their parents the article about Grgur Branković may be used (and it is in Serbian), while speculations about the ultimate fate of the universe are comparable with watching Battlestar Galactica or Star Track (and it is in English).
Milos I would say your English fluency is good enough to write one, please do. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grgur_Brankovi%C4%87&action=ed...
The less obvious benefit of supporting "failing projects" is that most of them will eventually return the favor by identifying topics which are encyclopedic despite being completely unknown to native English speakers. This alone is a good enough reason to keep these projects open.
Same with the other article you mentioned, would it be anything like this? :-) http://sr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0%C4%8D%D0%...
—C.W.
On 12/1/08, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
To do the second task we would still want to create projects in small languages so we could write learning resources to teach people the big languages.
I for one would enjoy learning resources targeted at those wishing to learn the "smaller" languages. Surely this can work both ways.
—C.W.
Fajro wrote:
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 2:08 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
No. You can argue for the tolerance of minority languages but actively promoting them conflicts with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
How?
Do you edit wikipedia to give "Free Access To All Human Knowledge" only to the educated elite?
It seems to me that this would differ greatly depending on the minority language. Some minority languages, despite being "minority", have millions of monolingual speakers. Clearly if these people are going to get Wikipedia's information without learning a new language, we need a good Wikipedia in that language, because otherwise the information is not available in a language they can understand.
But other minority languages have few to no monolingual speakers; some barely have any native speakers at all. The presence or absence of a Wikipedia in those language is more of an issue of language politics and language preservation than actual dissemination of an encyclopedia's contents.
-Mark
Hoi, First, the call for improvement of the usability of the MediaWiki software is neutral to languages. It is easy to appreciate how the smaller projects will benefit. It is even easy to argue that the big projects will benefit. Second, why would the promotion of minority languages conflict with the WMF stated objectives ?
When you argue for tolerance towards minority languages, you effectively discriminate against minority people and languages. When you make sure that our software supports any language as well as possible, as I do, minority languages are effectively not an issue. Enabling people to participate is what our goal should be, whatever the language, whatever the culture. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/1 geni geniice@gmail.com
2008/12/1 Fajro faigos@gmail.com:
Wow, just wow... I feel really sick after reading some of the messages of this tread.
Maybe the promotion of minority languages is not directly a goal of WMF
but
it's a must.
No. You can argue for the tolerance of minority languages but actively promoting them conflicts with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
-- geni
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Anyone who doubts about the deplorable state of, well, many language editions of Wikipedia, may have a look at this: http://pdc.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gleeder&oldid=25822 Gleeder
Measurements: WMF might: - reconsider the rules for allowing new language editions, with regard to the non fictional literature produced by the linguistic community and the linguistic proficiency of those who ask for the new edition (and don't let them be by too few) - be more strict that editions stick to Wikipedia rules, like those about the encyclopedic character of Wikipedia - give small Wikipedias more advice, like in http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Manual_for_small_and_new_Wikipedias - consider to install a kind of mentor or tutor for these small Wikipedias
Ziko van Dijk
2008/12/1 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
Hoi, First, the call for improvement of the usability of the MediaWiki software is neutral to languages. It is easy to appreciate how the smaller projects will benefit. It is even easy to argue that the big projects will benefit. Second, why would the promotion of minority languages conflict with the WMF stated objectives ?
When you argue for tolerance towards minority languages, you effectively discriminate against minority people and languages. When you make sure that our software supports any language as well as possible, as I do, minority languages are effectively not an issue. Enabling people to participate is what our goal should be, whatever the language, whatever the culture. Thanks, GerardM
2008/12/1 geni geniice@gmail.com
2008/12/1 Fajro faigos@gmail.com:
Wow, just wow... I feel really sick after reading some of the messages
of
this tread.
Maybe the promotion of minority languages is not directly a goal of WMF
but
it's a must.
No. You can argue for the tolerance of minority languages but actively promoting them conflicts with Wikimedia's stated objectives.
-- geni
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2008/12/1 Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com:
Anyone who doubts about the deplorable state of, well, many language editions of Wikipedia, may have a look at this: http://pdc.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gleeder&oldid=25822 Gleeder
That's hardly a good example - we're never going to have a good Wikipedia in a language mostly spoken by members of a culture that shuns modern technology, are we? Those speakers that aren't Amish are generally of the older generation, a demographic we have difficulty attracting (work has been done on that front, with some success as I understand it, but it requires an existing community to start the process).
Gerard, it would be good, if you could add links to all the extension pages in http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Uniwiki, which point to pages which use those extensions. There are links to two pages who use the Uniwiki package, but I was not able to find live examples of most of the single extensions. Where can I find CreatePage live in action, or 'Generic Edit Page' or Layouts? Screenshots on the single extension pages would be good too.
Marcus Buck
Hoi, In the blogging I have done on this subject, I included screen shots of the CreatePage extension. One screen shot shows the extension without a change to the skin, the other shows the same extension on a UNICEF wiki. The screen shot was created while we were testing it on one of the ExtensionTestinghttp://extensiontesting.wikiation.nl/environments. This environment has now been scratched because we moved on with the testing to other extensions.
What the UNIWIKI clearly shows, it that the CreatePage extension is used in combination with templates for an article of a specific type. This would urge users to include predefined headings and categories. This would be a boon to newbie editors and it would be a gentle way to urge a start with a more complete structure. In this way we might even get less stubs as a connsequence of implementing this functionality.
Marcus, you are probably right. As you are obviously getting your mind around this issue, you are in a great position to do exactly what you propose. Thanks, GerardM
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2008/11/improving-mediawiki-usability.ht...
2008/12/2 Marcus Buck me@marcusbuck.org
Gerard, it would be good, if you could add links to all the extension pages in http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Uniwiki, which point to pages which use those extensions. There are links to two pages who use the Uniwiki package, but I was not able to find live examples of most of the single extensions. Where can I find CreatePage live in action, or 'Generic Edit Page' or Layouts? Screenshots on the single extension pages would be good too.
Marcus Buck
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
It seems obvious to people who deal with small projects that usability is one of the big issue when it comes to the moribunt status of our small projects. The question I put to you, what are we going to do to first agree that this is an issue and then to deal with this issue. Do we care that 80% of our projects are failing?
I don't think the metric you propose is a particularly useful one. We could reduce it to 0% overnight by just deleting all the wikis that, by your definition, are failing. Or we could increase it to 90% by relaxing the project creation rules. It's not demonstrably bad for small projects to speculatively create wikis and then wait to see if they flourish.
Perhaps it would be better to evaluate our success in terms of our goals. We aim to bring the sum of all human knowledge to the people of the world in their own language. So how many words (or other unit of information) do we have in each language, and what do you get when you multiply that by the number of speakers of the language and sum over all projects? The result could be compared to older methods of information transfer, such as libraries.
-- Tim Starling
Tim Starling wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
It seems obvious to people who deal with small projects that usability is one of the big issue when it comes to the moribunt status of our small projects. The question I put to you, what are we going to do to first agree that this is an issue and then to deal with this issue. Do we care that 80% of our projects are failing?
I don't think the metric you propose is a particularly useful one. We could reduce it to 0% overnight by just deleting all the wikis that, by your definition, are failing. Or we could increase it to 90% by relaxing the project creation rules. It's not demonstrably bad for small projects to speculatively create wikis and then wait to see if they flourish.
Perhaps it would be better to evaluate our success in terms of our goals. We aim to bring the sum of all human knowledge to the people of the world in their own language. So how many words (or other unit of information) do we have in each language, and what do you get when you multiply that by the number of speakers of the language and sum over all projects? The result could be compared to older methods of information transfer, such as libraries.
-- Tim Starling
I would emphasize this message by pointing out that for nearly a full year of its existence, the Finnish language wikipedia would quite easily have qualified as a failing wikipedia. And look at where we are now. Closing in on the 200 000 article milestone. Sure, for other projects the time of gestation will be longer.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
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