Thanks, that was insightful.
I'll be in touch off list if I feel the need.
Regards,
Rui
2014-05-21 22:18 GMT+02:00 quiddity <pandiculation(a)gmail.com>om>:
On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 3:01 PM, Rui Correia
<correia.rui(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi
I realised a while back that I have in the past written to the Wikimedia
Foundation Mailing List and to the Wikimedia Mailing List without een
realising that I was writing to more than one list. I do now vaguely
recall
once getting a response saying that what I wanted
discusses would best be
discussed on the Foundation List. And I see there is also a Wikipedia
information team. And how do these, if at all, overlap with the Village
Pump? And the Portals?
Where could I find out more about what exactly is the purview of each of
these forums?
Hi Rui,
There are so many thousands of us, working on so many aspects of so many
projects, in so many languages, that we have hundreds of communication
channels.
Mailing lists:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Overview
IRC:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Channels
Village pumps at each wiki (eg English):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VP
Newsletters (eg English):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:News
etc.
You can sign up for everything (and be deluged with information daily), or
just ask each time, and hope someone friendly points you to the right
specific location. ("You're not a real Wiki*edian, until you've made and
learned from 50 mistakes", as someone told me years ago. :)
Basically, if it's a question about a single wiki, start off at that wiki's
Help page or Village Pump. And starting off small, is often best, even for
discussions that eventually grow to encompass multiple wikis. I don't know
if there are any pages/guides detailing /when/ it is best to take a
question to a mailing list.
Portals (in the Enwiki sense) aren't really discussion hubs themselves.
They're crossroad signposts or maps, giving an overview of a topic's
content and backstage work (generally targeted at readers and new editors).
Examples of the kind of issues and where to
discuss:
1. A simpler (automated) merge proposal template
2. A simpler deletion proposal process
3. Content issues that affect many articles (therefore talkpages are not
efficient)
For #3, the current method is WikiProjects. See further below, for more on
those.
The Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow> project aims to solve many
other aspects of these example issues. It's the "communication and
collaboration" system, currently being developed, with an initial focus on
user-to-user discussions. It's built with the idea of being able to easily
embed a single "workflow" (for discussions, this would be a Topic-thread)
across multiple pages, and even multiple wikis.
Later on (many months from now), they plan to create an abstract set of
"workflow components", so that each wiki can hook together the various APIs
and other processes they have available, to make tasks that are currently
very complicated and multi-step into a more efficient and seamless
endeavour.
Note that Flow is still in very early stages at the moment, and will change
drastically over the coming months and years. There is a /lot/ of work to
be done, and many avenues to explore. (E.g. There's a front-end overhaul
coming in the next few weeks, based on the last few months of
user-feedback, so the aesthetics will change drastically soon, with many
further iterations and experiments to come afterwards.) Feedback on the
talkpage is appreciated, with a long-term emphasis.
Some of these I have brought up before on one of
the lists.
Right now I would like to make two further suggestions even if after this
it turns out that I must do this on a different forum:
1. A source ranking system - edit summaries are full of "not a reliable
source" justifications. Can we not create a ranking system where editors
rank each source on a scale of 1-10 and a programme automatically
calculates that source a reliability value?
Basically no, because humans are fallible and inconsistent! Unreliable
[statements/articles] appear in generally reliable sources quite regularly.
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PEREN#Define_reliable_sourcesfor
more details, and links.
2. a) "Keep me informed on this" -
often one issue is discussed on a
multitude of pages (Bushmen/ Khoisan/ Khoi and San, is such an example)
and
it is difficult to keep track. Using any of the
existing systems that
group
pages together - such as categories - could we
not create a "theme/ issue
watchlist" similar to the page wattchlist currently available?
The existing possibility, is to create a list of pages (eg. in your
userspace/subpage, or a wikiproject subpage), and then click the "Related
changes" link in the toolbox. This will produce a "watchlist-style view"
of
just those pages. E.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChangesLinked/User:Rui_Gabriel_…
all the recent changes, for pages linked within your userpage.
For grander dreams, there is the
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Watchlist_wishlist - We all want an upgrade
(or a few alternatives) to the existing system, but it's a very complicated
beast to grapple with. I believe most of the people with the necessary
expertise are aware of the need, but lacking in available time. Small
features get added or fixed regularly, but an overhaul is in the
backburner/brainstorming stage. (I've got a draft email to send to the EE
mailing list <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ee>, some time
soon, to nudge at this. :)
2. b) As an add-on to the above, an actual means
of communication to
contact all editors working on a specific these - Asian languages, or
prehistoric art, for example.
Wikiprojects are the current solution for this. On the talkpage of most
articles (at Enwiki) are WikiProject Banners, which link to related hubs
for coordination of topic-based work. Eg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Prehistoric_art and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Languages_of_Asia That's where you'll
find the editors participating across broad ranges of articles.
There is some interest in investigating better ways of matching editors to
the topics that interest them, but it's still conceptual.
Best regards,
Rui
Hope that helps. :)
Quiddity (and partially with my liaison hat)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Quiddity
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
--
_________________________
Rui Correia
Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant
Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186
_______________