(I just posted this with bad formatting. Would a moderator please delete that earlier version?)
"Among my friends and acquaintances, everybody distrusts Wikipedia and everybody uses it." — Freeman Dyson, "How We Know" The New York Review of Books, 10 March 2011.
(Discussing recent UK survey results.) "We're trusted slightly more than the BBC. Now, that's a little scary, and probably inappropriate. ... We all know it's flawed. We all know we don't do as good a job as we wish we could do ... People trusted Encyclopedia Britannica - I think it was, like - 20 points ahead of us." — Jimmy Wales, "State of the Wiki" Wikimania speech, 10 August 2014.
The Wikimedia Foundation vision: "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment."
But "knowledge" of something implies confidence in its accuracy. While Wikipedia is untrustworthy, it is purveying something other than knowledge. This is a problem for the foundation, since it is failing to realise its vision - and for humankind, who deserves an encyclopaedia it can trust.
It is also a critical, existential vulnerability for Wikipedia. Google is factoring trustworthiness into its ranking algorithm.[1][2] It has already stopped using Wikipedia's medical articles in its "knowledge graph". Rightly. Soon we'll see Wikipedia's medical content (rightly) demoted from (often) the top search result to 5th or 10th - or oblivion (rightly) on page two.
The recently released State of the Wikimedia Foundation 2015 Call to Action [3] lists a set of objectives. One of the items under the heading "Focus on knowledge & community" is "Improve our measures of community health and content quality, and fund effective community and content initiatives.
The quality parameter that most needs measuring and improving is reliability/trustworthiness - if we take the survival of Wikipedia as an important goal. *Will the Foundation be funding any staff positions whose purpose is to measure the quality of the encyclopedia and nurture strategic initiatives specifically aimed at making Wikipedia an encyclopedia people can trust?*
Five years ago the Wikimedia Movement Strategic Plan [4] resolved to measure and measurably improve the quality of our offering, and no resources were allocated and it did not happen.
1. Hal Hodson 28 February 2015 "Google wants to rank websites based on facts not links" New Scientist 2. Hal Hodson 20 August 2014 "Google's fact-checking bots build vast knowledge bank" New Scientist 3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_the_Wikimedia_Founda... 4. https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summar...
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole
Has there been work to determine the accuracy of our medical coverage that's found it lacking? All the studies I've seen have said it's pretty good, but that was a while ago, and I know anecdotally that we've got a lot of work to do around, for example, womens' health issues.
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
(I just posted this with bad formatting. Would a moderator please delete that earlier version?)
"Among my friends and acquaintances, everybody distrusts Wikipedia and everybody uses it." — Freeman Dyson, "How We Know" The New York Review of Books, 10 March 2011.
(Discussing recent UK survey results.) "We're trusted slightly more than the BBC. Now, that's a little scary, and probably inappropriate. ... We all know it's flawed. We all know we don't do as good a job as we wish we could do ... People trusted Encyclopedia Britannica - I think it was, like - 20 points ahead of us." — Jimmy Wales, "State of the Wiki" Wikimania speech, 10 August 2014.
The Wikimedia Foundation vision: "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment."
But "knowledge" of something implies confidence in its accuracy. While Wikipedia is untrustworthy, it is purveying something other than knowledge. This is a problem for the foundation, since it is failing to realise its vision - and for humankind, who deserves an encyclopaedia it can trust.
It is also a critical, existential vulnerability for Wikipedia. Google is factoring trustworthiness into its ranking algorithm.[1][2] It has already stopped using Wikipedia's medical articles in its "knowledge graph". Rightly. Soon we'll see Wikipedia's medical content (rightly) demoted from (often) the top search result to 5th or 10th - or oblivion (rightly) on page two.
The recently released State of the Wikimedia Foundation 2015 Call to Action [3] lists a set of objectives. One of the items under the heading "Focus on knowledge & community" is "Improve our measures of community health and content quality, and fund effective community and content initiatives.
The quality parameter that most needs measuring and improving is reliability/trustworthiness - if we take the survival of Wikipedia as an important goal. *Will the Foundation be funding any staff positions whose purpose is to measure the quality of the encyclopedia and nurture strategic initiatives specifically aimed at making Wikipedia an encyclopedia people can trust?*
Five years ago the Wikimedia Movement Strategic Plan [4] resolved to measure and measurably improve the quality of our offering, and no resources were allocated and it did not happen.
- Hal Hodson 28 February 2015 "Google wants to rank websites based on
facts not links" New Scientist 2. Hal Hodson 20 August 2014 "Google's fact-checking bots build vast knowledge bank" New Scientist 3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_the_Wikimedia_Founda... 4. https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summar...
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
For medical articles we at svwp are very wary as there exist very good webpages issued by the health authorities related to all healthproblems and we certainly do not want our wp pages to contradict those.
We encountered severe problems when the English(American) articles were first introduced at svwp, as their recommendation differed from what is recommended here. For example when you have an urinary tract infection, it is here often not treated at all here, as bacteria is seen as normal, not to be taken away. But the big problem was he different recommendation of use of antibiotics and penicillin, which are prescribed much more restricted here then in US.
In our case we came to a proper article but only after long discussion, and most of us are laymen in medicin, so not able to check as closely all articles. And actually we at svwp are quite happy that the webpages from the authorities on health is ranked higher then our pages, at least when articles have sections around treatment and recommended prescriptions.
Anders
Oliver Keyes skrev den 2015-04-05 19:36:
Has there been work to determine the accuracy of our medical coverage that's found it lacking? All the studies I've seen have said it's pretty good, but that was a while ago, and I know anecdotally that we've got a lot of work to do around, for example, womens' health issues.
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
(I just posted this with bad formatting. Would a moderator please delete that earlier version?)
"Among my friends and acquaintances, everybody distrusts Wikipedia and everybody uses it." — Freeman Dyson, "How We Know" The New York Review of Books, 10 March 2011.
(Discussing recent UK survey results.) "We're trusted slightly more than the BBC. Now, that's a little scary, and probably inappropriate. ... We all know it's flawed. We all know we don't do as good a job as we wish we could do ... People trusted Encyclopedia Britannica - I think it was, like - 20 points ahead of us." — Jimmy Wales, "State of the Wiki" Wikimania speech, 10 August 2014.
The Wikimedia Foundation vision: "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment."
But "knowledge" of something implies confidence in its accuracy. While Wikipedia is untrustworthy, it is purveying something other than knowledge. This is a problem for the foundation, since it is failing to realise its vision - and for humankind, who deserves an encyclopaedia it can trust.
It is also a critical, existential vulnerability for Wikipedia. Google is factoring trustworthiness into its ranking algorithm.[1][2] It has already stopped using Wikipedia's medical articles in its "knowledge graph". Rightly. Soon we'll see Wikipedia's medical content (rightly) demoted from (often) the top search result to 5th or 10th - or oblivion (rightly) on page two.
The recently released State of the Wikimedia Foundation 2015 Call to Action [3] lists a set of objectives. One of the items under the heading "Focus on knowledge & community" is "Improve our measures of community health and content quality, and fund effective community and content initiatives.
The quality parameter that most needs measuring and improving is reliability/trustworthiness - if we take the survival of Wikipedia as an important goal. *Will the Foundation be funding any staff positions whose purpose is to measure the quality of the encyclopedia and nurture strategic initiatives specifically aimed at making Wikipedia an encyclopedia people can trust?*
Five years ago the Wikimedia Movement Strategic Plan [4] resolved to measure and measurably improve the quality of our offering, and no resources were allocated and it did not happen.
- Hal Hodson 28 February 2015 "Google wants to rank websites based on
facts not links" New Scientist 2. Hal Hodson 20 August 2014 "Google's fact-checking bots build vast knowledge bank" New Scientist 3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_the_Wikimedia_Founda... 4. https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summar...
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Thank you for your thoughtful replies.
Oliver: I'm working on a comprehensive answer to your questions.
Anders: I, too, am very relieved when I see something from a scholarly society or highly-regarded institution out-ranking us on search engine results for medical queries, and am pleased to see Google relying on such sources and not Wikipedia for their "sum of all human knowledge."
In case it got lost in the terrible formatting of my opening post, I'd very much like to know if the foundation intends employing staff to oversee the measurement of Wikipedia/-media quality and to nurture strategic initiatives aimed at making Wikipedia more reliable.
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole
On Mon, Apr 6, 2015 at 2:03 AM, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote:
For medical articles we at svwp are very wary as there exist very good webpages issued by the health authorities related to all healthproblems and we certainly do not want our wp pages to contradict those.
We encountered severe problems when the English(American) articles were first introduced at svwp, as their recommendation differed from what is recommended here. For example when you have an urinary tract infection, it is here often not treated at all here, as bacteria is seen as normal, not to be taken away. But the big problem was he different recommendation of use of antibiotics and penicillin, which are prescribed much more restricted here then in US.
In our case we came to a proper article but only after long discussion, and most of us are laymen in medicin, so not able to check as closely all articles. And actually we at svwp are quite happy that the webpages from the authorities on health is ranked higher then our pages, at least when articles have sections around treatment and recommended prescriptions.
Anders
Oliver Keyes skrev den 2015-04-05 19:36:
Has there been work to determine the accuracy of our medical coverage that's found it lacking? All the studies I've seen have said it's pretty good, but that was a while ago, and I know anecdotally that we've got a lot of work to do around, for example, womens' health issues.
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
(I just posted this with bad formatting. Would a moderator please delete that earlier version?)
"Among my friends and acquaintances, everybody distrusts Wikipedia and everybody uses it." — Freeman Dyson, "How We Know" The New York Review of Books, 10 March 2011.
(Discussing recent UK survey results.) "We're trusted slightly more than the BBC. Now, that's a little scary, and probably inappropriate. ... We all know it's flawed. We all know we don't do as good a job as we wish we could do ... People trusted Encyclopedia Britannica - I think it was, like - 20 points ahead of us." — Jimmy Wales, "State of the Wiki" Wikimania speech, 10 August 2014.
The Wikimedia Foundation vision: "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment."
But "knowledge" of something implies confidence in its accuracy. While Wikipedia is untrustworthy, it is purveying something other than knowledge. This is a problem for the foundation, since it is failing to realise its vision - and for humankind, who deserves an encyclopaedia it can trust.
It is also a critical, existential vulnerability for Wikipedia. Google is factoring trustworthiness into its ranking algorithm.[1][2] It has already stopped using Wikipedia's medical articles in its "knowledge graph". Rightly. Soon we'll see Wikipedia's medical content (rightly) demoted from (often) the top search result to 5th or 10th - or oblivion (rightly) on page two.
The recently released State of the Wikimedia Foundation 2015 Call to Action [3] lists a set of objectives. One of the items under the heading "Focus on knowledge & community" is "Improve our measures of community health and content quality, and fund effective community and content initiatives.
The quality parameter that most needs measuring and improving is reliability/trustworthiness - if we take the survival of Wikipedia as an important goal. *Will the Foundation be funding any staff positions whose purpose is to measure the quality of the encyclopedia and nurture strategic initiatives specifically aimed at making Wikipedia an encyclopedia people can trust?*
Five years ago the Wikimedia Movement Strategic Plan [4] resolved to measure and measurably improve the quality of our offering, and no resources were allocated and it did not happen.
- Hal Hodson 28 February 2015 "Google wants to rank websites based on
facts not links" New Scientist 2. Hal Hodson 20 August 2014 "Google's fact-checking bots build vast knowledge bank" New Scientist 3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_ the_Wikimedia_Foundation#2015_Call_to_Action 4. https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_ Strategic_Plan_Summary/Improve_Quality
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Oliver: I mean "I'm working on a comprehensive answer to your question (singular)".
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 4:10 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you for your thoughtful replies.
Oliver: I'm working on a comprehensive answer to your questions.
Anders: I, too, am very relieved when I see something from a scholarly society or highly-regarded institution out-ranking us on search engine results for medical queries, and am pleased to see Google relying on such sources and not Wikipedia for their "sum of all human knowledge."
In case it got lost in the terrible formatting of my opening post, I'd very much like to know if the foundation intends employing staff to oversee the measurement of Wikipedia/-media quality and to nurture strategic initiatives aimed at making Wikipedia more reliable.
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole
On Mon, Apr 6, 2015 at 2:03 AM, Anders Wennersten < mail@anderswennersten.se> wrote:
For medical articles we at svwp are very wary as there exist very good webpages issued by the health authorities related to all healthproblems and we certainly do not want our wp pages to contradict those.
We encountered severe problems when the English(American) articles were first introduced at svwp, as their recommendation differed from what is recommended here. For example when you have an urinary tract infection, it is here often not treated at all here, as bacteria is seen as normal, not to be taken away. But the big problem was he different recommendation of use of antibiotics and penicillin, which are prescribed much more restricted here then in US.
In our case we came to a proper article but only after long discussion, and most of us are laymen in medicin, so not able to check as closely all articles. And actually we at svwp are quite happy that the webpages from the authorities on health is ranked higher then our pages, at least when articles have sections around treatment and recommended prescriptions.
Anders
Oliver Keyes skrev den 2015-04-05 19:36:
Has there been work to determine the accuracy of our medical coverage that's found it lacking? All the studies I've seen have said it's pretty good, but that was a while ago, and I know anecdotally that we've got a lot of work to do around, for example, womens' health issues.
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
(I just posted this with bad formatting. Would a moderator please delete that earlier version?)
"Among my friends and acquaintances, everybody distrusts Wikipedia and everybody uses it." — Freeman Dyson, "How We Know" The New York Review of Books, 10 March 2011.
(Discussing recent UK survey results.) "We're trusted slightly more than the BBC. Now, that's a little scary, and probably inappropriate. ... We all know it's flawed. We all know we don't do as good a job as we wish we could do ... People trusted Encyclopedia Britannica - I think it was, like - 20 points ahead of us." — Jimmy Wales, "State of the Wiki" Wikimania speech, 10 August 2014.
The Wikimedia Foundation vision: "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment."
But "knowledge" of something implies confidence in its accuracy. While Wikipedia is untrustworthy, it is purveying something other than knowledge. This is a problem for the foundation, since it is failing to realise its vision - and for humankind, who deserves an encyclopaedia it can trust.
It is also a critical, existential vulnerability for Wikipedia. Google is factoring trustworthiness into its ranking algorithm.[1][2] It has already stopped using Wikipedia's medical articles in its "knowledge graph". Rightly. Soon we'll see Wikipedia's medical content (rightly) demoted from (often) the top search result to 5th or 10th - or oblivion (rightly) on page two.
The recently released State of the Wikimedia Foundation 2015 Call to Action [3] lists a set of objectives. One of the items under the heading "Focus on knowledge & community" is "Improve our measures of community health and content quality, and fund effective community and content initiatives.
The quality parameter that most needs measuring and improving is reliability/trustworthiness - if we take the survival of Wikipedia as an important goal. *Will the Foundation be funding any staff positions whose purpose is to measure the quality of the encyclopedia and nurture strategic initiatives specifically aimed at making Wikipedia an encyclopedia people can trust?*
Five years ago the Wikimedia Movement Strategic Plan [4] resolved to measure and measurably improve the quality of our offering, and no resources were allocated and it did not happen.
- Hal Hodson 28 February 2015 "Google wants to rank websites based on
facts not links" New Scientist 2. Hal Hodson 20 August 2014 "Google's fact-checking bots build vast knowledge bank" New Scientist 3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_ the_Wikimedia_Foundation#2015_Call_to_Action 4. https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_ Strategic_Plan_Summary/Improve_Quality
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org