Dear all, The discussion triggered by recent WMF T&S actions has tended to focus on the merits or otherwise of that specific action (even though as I have pointed out elsewhere this is very much a case of those who know don;t talk and those who talk don't know). So I though it might be helpful to try and abstract some more general points for discussion.
The long-term future of the Community, and the relationship between the Foundation and its volunteers is under discussion in an elaborately structured consultation announced already here in September 2017. It would not be particularly helpful to try to run a parallel discussion here. But in the short to medium term, it seems that it will be necessary for the Foundation to take a different stance with respect to the management of the various projects, and the English Wikipedia in particular.
It is often said that "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work." Well, that's half true. What the experiment has proved is that the theory was indeed correct -- Wikipedia, as currently constituted, does not work. There are two inter-related aspects to its failure: content and conduct, inextricably related in a project founded on crowd-sourcing.
Let's look at the content first. Even on Wikipedia's own terms, it has failed. It is a principle that Wikipedia is founded on reliable sources, and by its own admission, Wikipedia itself is not such a source. That bears repetition -- a project aiming to be an encyclopaedia, that compares itself with Britannica, explicitly is not reliable. Foundation research has shown that about one fifth of Wikipedia articles are supported by references that are inadequate to support the text or simply are not there. That's about a million articles each on of the larger Wikpedias. Some thousands of those are biographies of living people and in view of the risk of defamation, no such articles should exist on Wikipedia at all. There are several thousand articles that are possible copyright violations: again such articles should not be there. And when I say "should not", I mean according to the rules adopted by the Wikipedia volunteer community itself.
This links to the conduct aspects. The self-organising policies of the "encyclopaedia that anyone can edit" have flattened out the formal hierarchy to the extent that it has been replaced, necessarily, by an informal but strong hierarchy based on a reputation econiomy. This creates an unpleasant and hence ineffective working environment, and makes it all but impossible to organise a volunteer workforce into coping with the major violations of content policy alreay mentioned. Indeed, the conduct policy makes it all but impossible to effectively handle cases of major abuse, witting ot uwitting. For example, one reason for the failure to manage copyright violations is that some thousand of articles were written by a volunteer who was unable or unwilling to comply with the copyright requirements applicable to their contributions There is simply no mechanism that allows for contributions to be effectively checked either when contributed or subsequently, bcause there is no mechanism that makes it possible to manage or organise the work of the volunteers, and existing community norms will not accept such a degree of organisation.
These mutually reinforcing failures make to necessary for some degree of organisation and management of content and conduct to be imposed from outside the volunteer community. The Foundation has the resources and is the only entity that can acquire and deploy the expertise required to do so. No doubt this is unpalatable to some of the more vociferous members of the community -- those who stand highest in the reputation economy and have most to lose by it being replaced by an effective management policy. But the fact remains -- Wikipedia is failing, and in its present form will inevitably continue to do so.
Foundation or failure -- which is it to be?
Thrapostibongles
Hoi, It is not so much Wikipedia that is failing, it is the Wikipedia "business as usual" attitude that is failing. The challenge we face is now that we know and expect that things are to change, how do we introduce change and steer it in a way where people feel less threatened by the usual suspects.
What I have noticed is that there has been no room for real arguments, arguments where points of view are floated and considered for their merits. So what does it take for people to consider the merits of proposals without immediately reverting to "but that is not how I/we do things"?
Important when you want to consider points of view is the way in which we converse. There is a huge difference between calling a point of view bullshit and calling the person a bullshit artist. Even so, calling a POV bullshit is acceptable when arguments are provided WHY you consider something bullshit.
Technically many things have progressed to a point where Wikipedia could take them seriously. This does not happen even when it is all too obvious how our public would benefit. As our intention is to share in the sum of all knowledge, we do not need to have it all available, we can point to partners eg Open Library where publications are available written by the subject of an article. We do have the data in Wikidata and we could experiment by including Open Library in the {{authority control}}. Many more practical opportunities exist where Wikipedia would objectively benefit from a different modus operandi.
Given that as always, there are those who insist that Wikipedia has failed let us prove them wrong. Let's consider what is needed to make Wikipedia innovative again, what it takes for our community to be considered as not toxic. We can and, as a community we will benefit but as important Wikipedia, the project we all care for will turn a page. Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 at 14:18, Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all, The discussion triggered by recent WMF T&S actions has tended to focus on the merits or otherwise of that specific action (even though as I have pointed out elsewhere this is very much a case of those who know don;t talk and those who talk don't know). So I though it might be helpful to try and abstract some more general points for discussion.
The long-term future of the Community, and the relationship between the Foundation and its volunteers is under discussion in an elaborately structured consultation announced already here in September 2017. It would not be particularly helpful to try to run a parallel discussion here. But in the short to medium term, it seems that it will be necessary for the Foundation to take a different stance with respect to the management of the various projects, and the English Wikipedia in particular.
It is often said that "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work." Well, that's half true. What the experiment has proved is that the theory was indeed correct -- Wikipedia, as currently constituted, does not work. There are two inter-related aspects to its failure: content and conduct, inextricably related in a project founded on crowd-sourcing.
Let's look at the content first. Even on Wikipedia's own terms, it has failed. It is a principle that Wikipedia is founded on reliable sources, and by its own admission, Wikipedia itself is not such a source. That bears repetition -- a project aiming to be an encyclopaedia, that compares itself with Britannica, explicitly is not reliable. Foundation research has shown that about one fifth of Wikipedia articles are supported by references that are inadequate to support the text or simply are not there. That's about a million articles each on of the larger Wikpedias. Some thousands of those are biographies of living people and in view of the risk of defamation, no such articles should exist on Wikipedia at all. There are several thousand articles that are possible copyright violations: again such articles should not be there. And when I say "should not", I mean according to the rules adopted by the Wikipedia volunteer community itself.
This links to the conduct aspects. The self-organising policies of the "encyclopaedia that anyone can edit" have flattened out the formal hierarchy to the extent that it has been replaced, necessarily, by an informal but strong hierarchy based on a reputation econiomy. This creates an unpleasant and hence ineffective working environment, and makes it all but impossible to organise a volunteer workforce into coping with the major violations of content policy alreay mentioned. Indeed, the conduct policy makes it all but impossible to effectively handle cases of major abuse, witting ot uwitting. For example, one reason for the failure to manage copyright violations is that some thousand of articles were written by a volunteer who was unable or unwilling to comply with the copyright requirements applicable to their contributions There is simply no mechanism that allows for contributions to be effectively checked either when contributed or subsequently, bcause there is no mechanism that makes it possible to manage or organise the work of the volunteers, and existing community norms will not accept such a degree of organisation.
These mutually reinforcing failures make to necessary for some degree of organisation and management of content and conduct to be imposed from outside the volunteer community. The Foundation has the resources and is the only entity that can acquire and deploy the expertise required to do so. No doubt this is unpalatable to some of the more vociferous members of the community -- those who stand highest in the reputation economy and have most to lose by it being replaced by an effective management policy. But the fact remains -- Wikipedia is failing, and in its present form will inevitably continue to do so.
Foundation or failure -- which is it to be?
Thrapostibongles _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I think it's a good question.
The first thing, I think, is to regain the community's trust, which has been very badly damaged at this point. I only see one way for them to do that, and that is to back off, sooner rather than later. Ensure the community that this will not happen again, at least not until a solution workable to all sides can be arrived at. (And while I shouldn't have to say it--honor that.) If the WMF carries on the way that it is now, that loss of trust may become irreparable. In 2006-2007, when the WMF was starting to expand its role, some community members expressed a fear of this very type of situation, that the WMF would consider itself "in charge" of the project. They were, of course, ensured that, no, WMF's just here to handle the clerical stuff and keep the servers ticking along, that'd never happen. Some of us were around long enough to remember when those things were said, and that makes it feel, not just like a power grab, but like a betrayal. Don't say one thing and do something else.
From there, if you think there's a problem with the English Wikipedia,
discuss it with the community there. Not in carefully parsed and polished corporatese, but in frank, direct language. If you think something's wrong, say so. Be aware that "I want to see your source for that" is almost second-nature on the project, as well it should be. Come prepared. If you just kind of have a hazy guess based on a couple anecdotes, that's not going to fly. (Note that this means a widely publicized discussion on ENWP. NOT meta.)
From there, don't approach with the attitude of "Now, here is the solution
that we will be imposing." Instead, have an attitude of "What can we do to fix this and make things work better?". Whatever "it" may be. If it's like the points in the earlier email, that there are copyright violations, well, the community doesn't want those either. If it's poor sourcing, we don't want that. Errors? Don't want 'em. So, if those problems exist, of course we'll want to fix them too. You will not get an argument over those principles.
Once there actually is a consensus on a fix, then it can be proceeded with. There, the software fiascos are instructive. The first time around on them, WMF tried to use a "cram it down your throat" approach, with the predictable results since the software was not yet fit for purpose. After they withdrew it and fixed it, they came back and asked "Does this look alright to you now?". The result was overwhelming support to go forward with the deployments. Even those few people who still vehemently didn't want them didn't try to start a fight against it, or disable it by editing the MediaWiki namespace, because the community had come to a consensus on the matter and they weren't going to defy that.
Basically, you cannot start shoving someone and then be amazed and surprised when they fight back. Talk instead. It is utterly stupid and counterproductive for the community and WMF to be in a fight. That should absolutely never happen, and this situation was entirely preventable. But the WMF must very clearly understand that the English Wikipedia community, at least (and I suspect many others as well) will not willingly give up their editorial independence to the Foundation. That portion, I'm afraid, is never going to be negotiable. But without doing that, I think the community and the WMF can collaborate to solve problems, if and only if that relationship can be one based upon trust. But the community didn't swing first on this one, and the Foundation has absolutely got to stop picking these fights if it wants any credibility at all. You do not get someone to trust you by trying to force them to do something they don't want to.
Todd
On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 8:21 AM Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, It is not so much Wikipedia that is failing, it is the Wikipedia "business as usual" attitude that is failing. The challenge we face is now that we know and expect that things are to change, how do we introduce change and steer it in a way where people feel less threatened by the usual suspects.
What I have noticed is that there has been no room for real arguments, arguments where points of view are floated and considered for their merits. So what does it take for people to consider the merits of proposals without immediately reverting to "but that is not how I/we do things"?
Important when you want to consider points of view is the way in which we converse. There is a huge difference between calling a point of view bullshit and calling the person a bullshit artist. Even so, calling a POV bullshit is acceptable when arguments are provided WHY you consider something bullshit.
Technically many things have progressed to a point where Wikipedia could take them seriously. This does not happen even when it is all too obvious how our public would benefit. As our intention is to share in the sum of all knowledge, we do not need to have it all available, we can point to partners eg Open Library where publications are available written by the subject of an article. We do have the data in Wikidata and we could experiment by including Open Library in the {{authority control}}. Many more practical opportunities exist where Wikipedia would objectively benefit from a different modus operandi.
Given that as always, there are those who insist that Wikipedia has failed let us prove them wrong. Let's consider what is needed to make Wikipedia innovative again, what it takes for our community to be considered as not toxic. We can and, as a community we will benefit but as important Wikipedia, the project we all care for will turn a page. Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 at 14:18, Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all, The discussion triggered by recent WMF T&S actions has tended to focus on the merits or otherwise of that specific action (even though as I have pointed out elsewhere this is very much a case of those who know don;t
talk
and those who talk don't know). So I though it might be helpful to try
and
abstract some more general points for discussion.
The long-term future of the Community, and the relationship between the Foundation and its volunteers is under discussion in an elaborately structured consultation announced already here in September 2017. It
would
not be particularly helpful to try to run a parallel discussion here.
But
in the short to medium term, it seems that it will be necessary for the Foundation to take a different stance with respect to the management of
the
various projects, and the English Wikipedia in particular.
It is often said that "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works
in
practice. In theory, it can never work." Well, that's half true. What
the
experiment has proved is that the theory was indeed correct -- Wikipedia, as currently constituted, does not work. There are two inter-related aspects to its failure: content and conduct, inextricably related in a project founded on crowd-sourcing.
Let's look at the content first. Even on Wikipedia's own terms, it has failed. It is a principle that Wikipedia is founded on reliable sources, and by its own admission, Wikipedia itself is not such a source. That bears repetition -- a project aiming to be an encyclopaedia, that
compares
itself with Britannica, explicitly is not reliable. Foundation research has shown that about one fifth of Wikipedia articles are supported by references that are inadequate to support the text or simply are not there. That's about a million articles each on of the larger Wikpedias. Some thousands of those are biographies of living people and in view of
the
risk of defamation, no such articles should exist on Wikipedia at all. There are several thousand articles that are possible copyright
violations:
again such articles should not be there. And when I say "should not", I mean according to the rules adopted by the Wikipedia volunteer community itself.
This links to the conduct aspects. The self-organising policies of the "encyclopaedia that anyone can edit" have flattened out the formal hierarchy to the extent that it has been replaced, necessarily, by an informal but strong hierarchy based on a reputation econiomy. This
creates
an unpleasant and hence ineffective working environment, and makes it all but impossible to organise a volunteer workforce into coping with the
major
violations of content policy alreay mentioned. Indeed, the conduct
policy
makes it all but impossible to effectively handle cases of major abuse, witting ot uwitting. For example, one reason for the failure to manage copyright violations is that some thousand of articles were written by a volunteer who was unable or unwilling to comply with the copyright requirements applicable to their contributions There is simply no mechanism that allows for contributions to be effectively checked either when contributed or subsequently, bcause there is no mechanism that makes it possible to manage or organise the work of the volunteers, and
existing
community norms will not accept such a degree of organisation.
These mutually reinforcing failures make to necessary for some degree of organisation and management of content and conduct to be imposed from outside the volunteer community. The Foundation has the resources and is the only entity that can acquire and deploy the expertise required to do so. No doubt this is unpalatable to some of the more vociferous members
of
the community -- those who stand highest in the reputation economy and
have
most to lose by it being replaced by an effective management policy. But the fact remains -- Wikipedia is failing, and in its present form will inevitably continue to do so.
Foundation or failure -- which is it to be?
Thrapostibongles _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Hoi, There is a picture of Jimmy Wales giving a talk at a Wikimania explicitly talking about the situation that is here being considered. A person can be a wonderful editor and a toxic personality. What is happening is not new, it is coming to a head. When you, the English Wikipedia "community" has not seen this coming, where have you been.
Personally I have lost faith in the English "community" for its insistence on independence and thinking that it is the same as their way of doing things. It sucks, it is largely a power play where the incumbents fight of anything new, different because they consider themselves to be the "community". Yes they may be but it is not the best for us. Get a grip, consider this and do not think for a moment that it is not on you to allow for the difference. Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 at 17:09, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
I think it's a good question.
The first thing, I think, is to regain the community's trust, which has been very badly damaged at this point. I only see one way for them to do that, and that is to back off, sooner rather than later. Ensure the community that this will not happen again, at least not until a solution workable to all sides can be arrived at. (And while I shouldn't have to say it--honor that.) If the WMF carries on the way that it is now, that loss of trust may become irreparable. In 2006-2007, when the WMF was starting to expand its role, some community members expressed a fear of this very type of situation, that the WMF would consider itself "in charge" of the project. They were, of course, ensured that, no, WMF's just here to handle the clerical stuff and keep the servers ticking along, that'd never happen. Some of us were around long enough to remember when those things were said, and that makes it feel, not just like a power grab, but like a betrayal. Don't say one thing and do something else.
From there, if you think there's a problem with the English Wikipedia, discuss it with the community there. Not in carefully parsed and polished corporatese, but in frank, direct language. If you think something's wrong, say so. Be aware that "I want to see your source for that" is almost second-nature on the project, as well it should be. Come prepared. If you just kind of have a hazy guess based on a couple anecdotes, that's not going to fly. (Note that this means a widely publicized discussion on ENWP. NOT meta.)
From there, don't approach with the attitude of "Now, here is the solution that we will be imposing." Instead, have an attitude of "What can we do to fix this and make things work better?". Whatever "it" may be. If it's like the points in the earlier email, that there are copyright violations, well, the community doesn't want those either. If it's poor sourcing, we don't want that. Errors? Don't want 'em. So, if those problems exist, of course we'll want to fix them too. You will not get an argument over those principles.
Once there actually is a consensus on a fix, then it can be proceeded with. There, the software fiascos are instructive. The first time around on them, WMF tried to use a "cram it down your throat" approach, with the predictable results since the software was not yet fit for purpose. After they withdrew it and fixed it, they came back and asked "Does this look alright to you now?". The result was overwhelming support to go forward with the deployments. Even those few people who still vehemently didn't want them didn't try to start a fight against it, or disable it by editing the MediaWiki namespace, because the community had come to a consensus on the matter and they weren't going to defy that.
Basically, you cannot start shoving someone and then be amazed and surprised when they fight back. Talk instead. It is utterly stupid and counterproductive for the community and WMF to be in a fight. That should absolutely never happen, and this situation was entirely preventable. But the WMF must very clearly understand that the English Wikipedia community, at least (and I suspect many others as well) will not willingly give up their editorial independence to the Foundation. That portion, I'm afraid, is never going to be negotiable. But without doing that, I think the community and the WMF can collaborate to solve problems, if and only if that relationship can be one based upon trust. But the community didn't swing first on this one, and the Foundation has absolutely got to stop picking these fights if it wants any credibility at all. You do not get someone to trust you by trying to force them to do something they don't want to.
Todd
On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 8:21 AM Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
wrote:
Hoi, It is not so much Wikipedia that is failing, it is the Wikipedia
"business
as usual" attitude that is failing. The challenge we face is now that we know and expect that things are to change, how do we introduce change and steer it in a way where people feel less threatened by the usual
suspects.
What I have noticed is that there has been no room for real arguments, arguments where points of view are floated and considered for their
merits.
So what does it take for people to consider the merits of proposals
without
immediately reverting to "but that is not how I/we do things"?
Important when you want to consider points of view is the way in which we converse. There is a huge difference between calling a point of view bullshit and calling the person a bullshit artist. Even so, calling a POV bullshit is acceptable when arguments are provided WHY you consider something bullshit.
Technically many things have progressed to a point where Wikipedia could take them seriously. This does not happen even when it is all too obvious how our public would benefit. As our intention is to share in the sum of all knowledge, we do not need to have it all available, we can point to partners eg Open Library where publications are available written by the subject of an article. We do have the data in Wikidata and we could experiment by including Open Library in the {{authority control}}. Many more practical opportunities exist where Wikipedia would objectively benefit from a different modus operandi.
Given that as always, there are those who insist that Wikipedia has
failed
let us prove them wrong. Let's consider what is needed to make Wikipedia innovative again, what it takes for our community to be considered as not toxic. We can and, as a community we will benefit but as important Wikipedia, the project we all care for will turn a page. Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 at 14:18, Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all, The discussion triggered by recent WMF T&S actions has tended to focus
on
the merits or otherwise of that specific action (even though as I have pointed out elsewhere this is very much a case of those who know don;t
talk
and those who talk don't know). So I though it might be helpful to try
and
abstract some more general points for discussion.
The long-term future of the Community, and the relationship between the Foundation and its volunteers is under discussion in an elaborately structured consultation announced already here in September 2017. It
would
not be particularly helpful to try to run a parallel discussion here.
But
in the short to medium term, it seems that it will be necessary for the Foundation to take a different stance with respect to the management of
the
various projects, and the English Wikipedia in particular.
It is often said that "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works
in
practice. In theory, it can never work." Well, that's half true. What
the
experiment has proved is that the theory was indeed correct --
Wikipedia,
as currently constituted, does not work. There are two inter-related aspects to its failure: content and conduct, inextricably related in a project founded on crowd-sourcing.
Let's look at the content first. Even on Wikipedia's own terms, it has failed. It is a principle that Wikipedia is founded on reliable
sources,
and by its own admission, Wikipedia itself is not such a source. That bears repetition -- a project aiming to be an encyclopaedia, that
compares
itself with Britannica, explicitly is not reliable. Foundation
research
has shown that about one fifth of Wikipedia articles are supported by references that are inadequate to support the text or simply are not there. That's about a million articles each on of the larger
Wikpedias.
Some thousands of those are biographies of living people and in view of
the
risk of defamation, no such articles should exist on Wikipedia at all. There are several thousand articles that are possible copyright
violations:
again such articles should not be there. And when I say "should not",
I
mean according to the rules adopted by the Wikipedia volunteer
community
itself.
This links to the conduct aspects. The self-organising policies of the "encyclopaedia that anyone can edit" have flattened out the formal hierarchy to the extent that it has been replaced, necessarily, by an informal but strong hierarchy based on a reputation econiomy. This
creates
an unpleasant and hence ineffective working environment, and makes it
all
but impossible to organise a volunteer workforce into coping with the
major
violations of content policy alreay mentioned. Indeed, the conduct
policy
makes it all but impossible to effectively handle cases of major abuse, witting ot uwitting. For example, one reason for the failure to manage copyright violations is that some thousand of articles were written by
a
volunteer who was unable or unwilling to comply with the copyright requirements applicable to their contributions There is simply no mechanism that allows for contributions to be effectively checked
either
when contributed or subsequently, bcause there is no mechanism that
makes
it possible to manage or organise the work of the volunteers, and
existing
community norms will not accept such a degree of organisation.
These mutually reinforcing failures make to necessary for some degree
of
organisation and management of content and conduct to be imposed from outside the volunteer community. The Foundation has the resources and
is
the only entity that can acquire and deploy the expertise required to
do
so. No doubt this is unpalatable to some of the more vociferous
members
of
the community -- those who stand highest in the reputation economy and
have
most to lose by it being replaced by an effective management policy.
But
the fact remains -- Wikipedia is failing, and in its present form will inevitably continue to do so.
Foundation or failure -- which is it to be?
Thrapostibongles _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I disagree that Wikipedia not considering Wikipedia as an admissible source is indicative of Wikipedia being a failure.
On Sun, Jun 16, 2019, 14:18 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all, The discussion triggered by recent WMF T&S actions has tended to focus on the merits or otherwise of that specific action (even though as I have pointed out elsewhere this is very much a case of those who know don;t talk and those who talk don't know). So I though it might be helpful to try and abstract some more general points for discussion.
The long-term future of the Community, and the relationship between the Foundation and its volunteers is under discussion in an elaborately structured consultation announced already here in September 2017. It would not be particularly helpful to try to run a parallel discussion here. But in the short to medium term, it seems that it will be necessary for the Foundation to take a different stance with respect to the management of the various projects, and the English Wikipedia in particular.
It is often said that "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work." Well, that's half true. What the experiment has proved is that the theory was indeed correct -- Wikipedia, as currently constituted, does not work. There are two inter-related aspects to its failure: content and conduct, inextricably related in a project founded on crowd-sourcing.
Let's look at the content first. Even on Wikipedia's own terms, it has failed. It is a principle that Wikipedia is founded on reliable sources, and by its own admission, Wikipedia itself is not such a source. That bears repetition -- a project aiming to be an encyclopaedia, that compares itself with Britannica, explicitly is not reliable. Foundation research has shown that about one fifth of Wikipedia articles are supported by references that are inadequate to support the text or simply are not there. That's about a million articles each on of the larger Wikpedias. Some thousands of those are biographies of living people and in view of the risk of defamation, no such articles should exist on Wikipedia at all. There are several thousand articles that are possible copyright violations: again such articles should not be there. And when I say "should not", I mean according to the rules adopted by the Wikipedia volunteer community itself.
This links to the conduct aspects. The self-organising policies of the "encyclopaedia that anyone can edit" have flattened out the formal hierarchy to the extent that it has been replaced, necessarily, by an informal but strong hierarchy based on a reputation econiomy. This creates an unpleasant and hence ineffective working environment, and makes it all but impossible to organise a volunteer workforce into coping with the major violations of content policy alreay mentioned. Indeed, the conduct policy makes it all but impossible to effectively handle cases of major abuse, witting ot uwitting. For example, one reason for the failure to manage copyright violations is that some thousand of articles were written by a volunteer who was unable or unwilling to comply with the copyright requirements applicable to their contributions There is simply no mechanism that allows for contributions to be effectively checked either when contributed or subsequently, bcause there is no mechanism that makes it possible to manage or organise the work of the volunteers, and existing community norms will not accept such a degree of organisation.
These mutually reinforcing failures make to necessary for some degree of organisation and management of content and conduct to be imposed from outside the volunteer community. The Foundation has the resources and is the only entity that can acquire and deploy the expertise required to do so. No doubt this is unpalatable to some of the more vociferous members of the community -- those who stand highest in the reputation economy and have most to lose by it being replaced by an effective management policy. But the fact remains -- Wikipedia is failing, and in its present form will inevitably continue to do so.
Foundation or failure -- which is it to be?
Thrapostibongles _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Honestly I cannot imagine a functional Wikipedia citing itself. Such Wikipedia would be so easy to trick.
Vito
Il giorno dom 16 giu 2019 alle ore 16:54 Martijn Hoekstra < martijnhoekstra@gmail.com> ha scritto:
I disagree that Wikipedia not considering Wikipedia as an admissible source is indicative of Wikipedia being a failure.
On Sun, Jun 16, 2019, 14:18 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all, The discussion triggered by recent WMF T&S actions has tended to focus on the merits or otherwise of that specific action (even though as I have pointed out elsewhere this is very much a case of those who know don;t
talk
and those who talk don't know). So I though it might be helpful to try
and
abstract some more general points for discussion.
The long-term future of the Community, and the relationship between the Foundation and its volunteers is under discussion in an elaborately structured consultation announced already here in September 2017. It
would
not be particularly helpful to try to run a parallel discussion here.
But
in the short to medium term, it seems that it will be necessary for the Foundation to take a different stance with respect to the management of
the
various projects, and the English Wikipedia in particular.
It is often said that "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works
in
practice. In theory, it can never work." Well, that's half true. What
the
experiment has proved is that the theory was indeed correct -- Wikipedia, as currently constituted, does not work. There are two inter-related aspects to its failure: content and conduct, inextricably related in a project founded on crowd-sourcing.
Let's look at the content first. Even on Wikipedia's own terms, it has failed. It is a principle that Wikipedia is founded on reliable sources, and by its own admission, Wikipedia itself is not such a source. That bears repetition -- a project aiming to be an encyclopaedia, that
compares
itself with Britannica, explicitly is not reliable. Foundation research has shown that about one fifth of Wikipedia articles are supported by references that are inadequate to support the text or simply are not there. That's about a million articles each on of the larger Wikpedias. Some thousands of those are biographies of living people and in view of
the
risk of defamation, no such articles should exist on Wikipedia at all. There are several thousand articles that are possible copyright
violations:
again such articles should not be there. And when I say "should not", I mean according to the rules adopted by the Wikipedia volunteer community itself.
This links to the conduct aspects. The self-organising policies of the "encyclopaedia that anyone can edit" have flattened out the formal hierarchy to the extent that it has been replaced, necessarily, by an informal but strong hierarchy based on a reputation econiomy. This
creates
an unpleasant and hence ineffective working environment, and makes it all but impossible to organise a volunteer workforce into coping with the
major
violations of content policy alreay mentioned. Indeed, the conduct
policy
makes it all but impossible to effectively handle cases of major abuse, witting ot uwitting. For example, one reason for the failure to manage copyright violations is that some thousand of articles were written by a volunteer who was unable or unwilling to comply with the copyright requirements applicable to their contributions There is simply no mechanism that allows for contributions to be effectively checked either when contributed or subsequently, bcause there is no mechanism that makes it possible to manage or organise the work of the volunteers, and
existing
community norms will not accept such a degree of organisation.
These mutually reinforcing failures make to necessary for some degree of organisation and management of content and conduct to be imposed from outside the volunteer community. The Foundation has the resources and is the only entity that can acquire and deploy the expertise required to do so. No doubt this is unpalatable to some of the more vociferous members
of
the community -- those who stand highest in the reputation economy and
have
most to lose by it being replaced by an effective management policy. But the fact remains -- Wikipedia is failing, and in its present form will inevitably continue to do so.
Foundation or failure -- which is it to be?
Thrapostibongles _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Vito
This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely that it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias, may be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia on one of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability. And a reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies and mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that being an editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant synonym for contributor).
Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and processes that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like the encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that situation, it would be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it must be to "trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes in place!
Thrapostibongles
On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 6:46 PM Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Honestly I cannot imagine a functional Wikipedia citing itself. Such Wikipedia would be so easy to trick.
Vito
Il giorno dom 16 giu 2019 alle ore 16:54 Martijn Hoekstra < martijnhoekstra@gmail.com> ha scritto:
I disagree that Wikipedia not considering Wikipedia as an admissible
source
is indicative of Wikipedia being a failure.
On Sun, Jun 16, 2019, 14:18 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all, The discussion triggered by recent WMF T&S actions has tended to focus
on
the merits or otherwise of that specific action (even though as I have pointed out elsewhere this is very much a case of those who know don;t
talk
and those who talk don't know). So I though it might be helpful to try
and
abstract some more general points for discussion.
The long-term future of the Community, and the relationship between the Foundation and its volunteers is under discussion in an elaborately structured consultation announced already here in September 2017. It
would
not be particularly helpful to try to run a parallel discussion here.
But
in the short to medium term, it seems that it will be necessary for the Foundation to take a different stance with respect to the management of
the
various projects, and the English Wikipedia in particular.
It is often said that "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works
in
practice. In theory, it can never work." Well, that's half true. What
the
experiment has proved is that the theory was indeed correct --
Wikipedia,
as currently constituted, does not work. There are two inter-related aspects to its failure: content and conduct, inextricably related in a project founded on crowd-sourcing.
Let's look at the content first. Even on Wikipedia's own terms, it has failed. It is a principle that Wikipedia is founded on reliable
sources,
and by its own admission, Wikipedia itself is not such a source. That bears repetition -- a project aiming to be an encyclopaedia, that
compares
itself with Britannica, explicitly is not reliable. Foundation
research
has shown that about one fifth of Wikipedia articles are supported by references that are inadequate to support the text or simply are not there. That's about a million articles each on of the larger
Wikpedias.
Some thousands of those are biographies of living people and in view of
the
risk of defamation, no such articles should exist on Wikipedia at all. There are several thousand articles that are possible copyright
violations:
again such articles should not be there. And when I say "should not",
I
mean according to the rules adopted by the Wikipedia volunteer
community
itself.
This links to the conduct aspects. The self-organising policies of the "encyclopaedia that anyone can edit" have flattened out the formal hierarchy to the extent that it has been replaced, necessarily, by an informal but strong hierarchy based on a reputation econiomy. This
creates
an unpleasant and hence ineffective working environment, and makes it
all
but impossible to organise a volunteer workforce into coping with the
major
violations of content policy alreay mentioned. Indeed, the conduct
policy
makes it all but impossible to effectively handle cases of major abuse, witting ot uwitting. For example, one reason for the failure to manage copyright violations is that some thousand of articles were written by
a
volunteer who was unable or unwilling to comply with the copyright requirements applicable to their contributions There is simply no mechanism that allows for contributions to be effectively checked
either
when contributed or subsequently, bcause there is no mechanism that
makes
it possible to manage or organise the work of the volunteers, and
existing
community norms will not accept such a degree of organisation.
These mutually reinforcing failures make to necessary for some degree
of
organisation and management of content and conduct to be imposed from outside the volunteer community. The Foundation has the resources and
is
the only entity that can acquire and deploy the expertise required to
do
so. No doubt this is unpalatable to some of the more vociferous
members
of
the community -- those who stand highest in the reputation economy and
have
most to lose by it being replaced by an effective management policy.
But
the fact remains -- Wikipedia is failing, and in its present form will inevitably continue to do so.
Foundation or failure -- which is it to be?
Thrapostibongles _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely that it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source "
You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which people here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe" environment for contributors and would-be contributors.
It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow set of points of view. Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB articles as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Vito
This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely that it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias, may be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia on one of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability. And a reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies and mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that being an editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant synonym for contributor).
Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and processes that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like the encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that situation, it would be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it must be to "trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes in place!
Thrapostibongles
Dennis,
I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact. Wikipedia is a project to build an encyclopaedia. By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are reliable sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own criteria, Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia. That is, it is currently in a state of failure with respect to its own mission.
One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to provide a collegial working atmosphere.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com wrote:
"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely that it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source "
You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which people here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe" environment for contributors and would-be contributors.
It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow set of points of view. Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB articles as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Vito
This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely
that
it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias, may be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia on
one
of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability. And a reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies and mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that being
an
editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant
synonym
for contributor).
Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and processes that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like the encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that situation, it
would
be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it must be to "trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes in place!
Thrapostibongles
-- Dennis C. During _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
It might be a good thread were it based on a better line of argument.
You are making too much of an artifact of the drafting of a Wikipedia policy. The intent was clearly to prevent 1., bootstrapping, ie, writing an article and using it as a 'reliable source' for another article, and 2., reliance on content of a wiki article which is subject to change. There might also have been other ways to manipulate the software and policies to the detriment of the project.
The main thrust of the policy was to compel the use of reliable sources. Rather than make a policy specific to WP or other project wikis, it was much simpler to simply declare that WP was not a reliable source.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 1:55 PM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dennis,
I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact. Wikipedia is a project to build an encyclopaedia. By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are reliable sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own criteria, Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia. That is, it is currently in a state of failure with respect to its own mission.
One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to provide a collegial working atmosphere.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com wrote:
"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being
in
a failed state is precisely that it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
source
"
You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which people here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe" environment for contributors and would-be contributors.
It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow set
of
points of view. Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB
articles
as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Vito
This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most
important)
pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely
that
it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias,
may
be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia on
one
of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability.
And a
reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies
and
mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that
being
an
editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant
synonym
for contributor).
Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and
processes
that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like
the
encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that situation, it
would
be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it must be
to
"trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes
in
place!
Thrapostibongles
-- Dennis C. During _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Wikipedia itself can never be more reliable than the sources it cites. If it's allowed to cite itself, then there is no "bottom" to lean on, and its quality would quickly drop.
That you conclude from that that wikipedia is unreliable and therefore failed is IMO such a silly proposition, that I dont know whether you seriously think this, in which case we should probably take this off list, or that you're engaging in sophistry and using arguments you don't think are reasonable in the first place.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 19:56 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dennis,
I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact. Wikipedia is a project to build an encyclopaedia. By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are reliable sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own criteria, Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia. That is, it is currently in a state of failure with respect to its own mission.
One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to provide a collegial working atmosphere.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com wrote:
"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being
in
a failed state is precisely that it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
source
"
You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which people here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe" environment for contributors and would-be contributors.
It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow set
of
points of view. Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB
articles
as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Vito
This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most
important)
pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely
that
it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias,
may
be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia on
one
of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability.
And a
reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies
and
mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that
being
an
editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant
synonym
for contributor).
Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and
processes
that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like
the
encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that situation, it
would
be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it must be
to
"trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes
in
place!
Thrapostibongles
-- Dennis C. During _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: 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 and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Martin, Dennis
The tenor of your arguments appears to be that Wikipedia is in fact reliable, because it uses reliable sources, but that it pretends not to be because it's too hard to prevent people writing article based on other articles. This is not in accord with the facts. As I pointed out, and as Foundation research has shown, millions -- literally millions, and when I say "literally" I literally mean "literally" -- of articles, about one in five, are not founded on reliable sources, and some thousands of those, being biographies of living people, should have been instantly deleted. So we cannot rely on any of those millions of articles, by your own reasoning. The reason why Wikipedia deems itself unreliable is that it is an open wiki, and all such sources are forbidden, because anyone can write anything on them: "Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is also generally unacceptable." Wikipedia is cited in the policy as merely another example of such unreliable sources.
The way forward, however unpalatable this may be to people who would like to believe that this is somehow silly or sophistry, is to look the facts in the face and accept that some form of editorial policy, content workflow management and supervision of the volunteer effort is necessary to make Wikipedia what aspires to be, but is not currently, namely an encyclopaedia.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 11:06 PM Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia itself can never be more reliable than the sources it cites. If it's allowed to cite itself, then there is no "bottom" to lean on, and its quality would quickly drop.
That you conclude from that that wikipedia is unreliable and therefore failed is IMO such a silly proposition, that I dont know whether you seriously think this, in which case we should probably take this off list, or that you're engaging in sophistry and using arguments you don't think are reasonable in the first place.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 19:56 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dennis,
I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact. Wikipedia is a project to build an encyclopaedia. By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are reliable sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own
criteria,
Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia. That is, it is currently in a state
of
failure with respect to its own mission.
One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to provide a collegial working atmosphere.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com
wrote:
"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia
being
in
a failed state is precisely that it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
source
"
You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which people here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe"
environment
for contributors and would-be contributors.
It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow set
of
points of view. Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB
articles
as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Vito
This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most
important)
pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely
that
it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias,
may
be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia
on
one
of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability.
And a
reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies
and
mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that
being
an
editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant
synonym
for contributor).
Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and
processes
that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like
the
encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that situation, it
would
be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it must
be
to
"trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes
in
place!
Thrapostibongles
-- Dennis C. During _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
No.
What I'm saying is this: setting meeting the reliable sources policy of wikipedia as a condition for success, or not meeting that policy as evidence of failure is ridiculous.
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 14:29 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Martin, Dennis
The tenor of your arguments appears to be that Wikipedia is in fact reliable, because it uses reliable sources, but that it pretends not to be because it's too hard to prevent people writing article based on other articles. This is not in accord with the facts. As I pointed out, and as Foundation research has shown, millions -- literally millions, and when I say "literally" I literally mean "literally" -- of articles, about one in five, are not founded on reliable sources, and some thousands of those, being biographies of living people, should have been instantly deleted. So we cannot rely on any of those millions of articles, by your own reasoning. The reason why Wikipedia deems itself unreliable is that it is an open wiki, and all such sources are forbidden, because anyone can write anything on them: "Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is also generally unacceptable." Wikipedia is cited in the policy as merely another example of such unreliable sources.
The way forward, however unpalatable this may be to people who would like to believe that this is somehow silly or sophistry, is to look the facts in the face and accept that some form of editorial policy, content workflow management and supervision of the volunteer effort is necessary to make Wikipedia what aspires to be, but is not currently, namely an encyclopaedia.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 11:06 PM Martijn Hoekstra < martijnhoekstra@gmail.com> wrote:
Wikipedia itself can never be more reliable than the sources it cites. If it's allowed to cite itself, then there is no "bottom" to lean on, and
its
quality would quickly drop.
That you conclude from that that wikipedia is unreliable and therefore failed is IMO such a silly proposition, that I dont know whether you seriously think this, in which case we should probably take this off
list,
or that you're engaging in sophistry and using arguments you don't think are reasonable in the first place.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 19:56 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dennis,
I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact. Wikipedia is a project to build an encyclopaedia. By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are
reliable
sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own
criteria,
Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia. That is, it is currently in a state
of
failure with respect to its own mission.
One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to provide a collegial working atmosphere.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com
wrote:
"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia
being
in
a failed state is precisely that it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
source
"
You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which
people
here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe"
environment
for contributors and would-be contributors.
It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow
set
of
points of view. Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB
articles
as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Vito
This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most
important)
pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is
precisely
that
it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a
reliable
source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and
encyclopedias,
may
be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia
on
one
of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability.
And a
reason for that is its lack of effective content management
policies
and
mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that
being
an
editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant
synonym
for contributor).
Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and
processes
that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just
like
the
encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that situation,
it
would
be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it must
be
to
"trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and
processes
in
place!
Thrapostibongles
-- Dennis C. During _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
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Martin
You really think that it is ridiculous that encyclopaedias in general and Wikipedia in particular should be judged, among other criteria, on their reliability? If so, I disagree.
However, if you really believe that an encyclopadia does not ned to be reliable, then it seems that on this specific point we may need to agree to disagree. How about the other points I adduce, such as the millions of unreferenced or inadeqautely referenced articles discovered at https://wikimediafoundation.org/2019/04/03/can-machine-learning-uncover-wiki... -- is that evidence of success? The thousands of articles in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unreferenced_BLPs -- is that evidence of success?
Thrapostibongles
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 1:44 PM Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com wrote:
No.
What I'm saying is this: setting meeting the reliable sources policy of wikipedia as a condition for success, or not meeting that policy as evidence of failure is ridiculous.
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 14:29 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Martin, Dennis
The tenor of your arguments appears to be that Wikipedia is in fact reliable, because it uses reliable sources, but that it pretends not to
be
because it's too hard to prevent people writing article based on other articles. This is not in accord with the facts. As I pointed out, and
as
Foundation research has shown, millions -- literally millions, and when I say "literally" I literally mean "literally" -- of articles, about one in five, are not founded on reliable sources, and some thousands of those, being biographies of living people, should have been instantly deleted.
So
we cannot rely on any of those millions of articles, by your own reasoning. The reason why Wikipedia deems itself unreliable is that it
is
an open wiki, and all such sources are forbidden, because anyone can
write
anything on them: "Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is also generally unacceptable." Wikipedia is cited in the policy as merely another example of such unreliable sources.
The way forward, however unpalatable this may be to people who would like to believe that this is somehow silly or sophistry, is to look the facts
in
the face and accept that some form of editorial policy, content workflow management and supervision of the volunteer effort is necessary to make Wikipedia what aspires to be, but is not currently, namely an encyclopaedia.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 11:06 PM Martijn Hoekstra < martijnhoekstra@gmail.com> wrote:
Wikipedia itself can never be more reliable than the sources it cites.
If
it's allowed to cite itself, then there is no "bottom" to lean on, and
its
quality would quickly drop.
That you conclude from that that wikipedia is unreliable and therefore failed is IMO such a silly proposition, that I dont know whether you seriously think this, in which case we should probably take this off
list,
or that you're engaging in sophistry and using arguments you don't
think
are reasonable in the first place.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 19:56 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dennis,
I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact. Wikipedia is a project
to
build an encyclopaedia. By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are
reliable
sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own
criteria,
Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia. That is, it is currently in a
state
of
failure with respect to its own mission.
One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to provide a collegial working atmosphere.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com
wrote:
"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia
being
in
a failed state is precisely that it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a
reliable
source
"
You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece
of
evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which
people
here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe"
environment
for contributors and would-be contributors.
It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as
the
average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us
from
relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow
set
of
points of view. Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB
articles
as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Vito
This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most
important)
pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is
precisely
that
it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a
reliable
source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and
encyclopedias,
may
be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an
encyclopaedia
on
one
of the most important tests one could imagine, namely
reliability.
And a
reason for that is its lack of effective content management
policies
and
mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called
that
being
an
editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a
redundant
synonym
for contributor).
Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and
processes
that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just
like
the
encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that
situation,
it
would
be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it
must
be
to
"trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and
processes
in
place!
Thrapostibongles
-- Dennis C. During _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
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On Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 13:16 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Martin
You really think that it is ridiculous that encyclopaedias in general and Wikipedia in particular should be judged, among other criteria, on their reliability? If so, I disagree.
No, I'm saying that it's ridiculous to judge wikipedia on its policy that citing itself is disallowed.
You keep rephrasing what I say in order to disagree with something I dont say. Stop doing that.
However, if you really believe that an encyclopadia does not ned to be reliable, then it seems that on this specific point we may need to agree to disagree. How about the other points I adduce, such as the millions of unreferenced or inadeqautely referenced articles discovered at
https://wikimediafoundation.org/2019/04/03/can-machine-learning-uncover-wiki...
is that evidence of success? The thousands of articles in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unreferenced_BLPs -- is that evidence of success?
Thrapostibongles
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 1:44 PM Martijn Hoekstra < martijnhoekstra@gmail.com> wrote:
No.
What I'm saying is this: setting meeting the reliable sources policy of wikipedia as a condition for success, or not meeting that policy as evidence of failure is ridiculous.
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 14:29 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Martin, Dennis
The tenor of your arguments appears to be that Wikipedia is in fact reliable, because it uses reliable sources, but that it pretends not to
be
because it's too hard to prevent people writing article based on other articles. This is not in accord with the facts. As I pointed out, and
as
Foundation research has shown, millions -- literally millions, and
when I
say "literally" I literally mean "literally" -- of articles, about one
in
five, are not founded on reliable sources, and some thousands of those, being biographies of living people, should have been instantly deleted.
So
we cannot rely on any of those millions of articles, by your own reasoning. The reason why Wikipedia deems itself unreliable is that it
is
an open wiki, and all such sources are forbidden, because anyone can
write
anything on them: "Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is also generally unacceptable." Wikipedia is cited in the policy as merely another example of such unreliable sources.
The way forward, however unpalatable this may be to people who would
like
to believe that this is somehow silly or sophistry, is to look the
facts
in
the face and accept that some form of editorial policy, content
workflow
management and supervision of the volunteer effort is necessary to make Wikipedia what aspires to be, but is not currently, namely an encyclopaedia.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 11:06 PM Martijn Hoekstra < martijnhoekstra@gmail.com> wrote:
Wikipedia itself can never be more reliable than the sources it
cites.
If
it's allowed to cite itself, then there is no "bottom" to lean on,
and
its
quality would quickly drop.
That you conclude from that that wikipedia is unreliable and
therefore
failed is IMO such a silly proposition, that I dont know whether you seriously think this, in which case we should probably take this off
list,
or that you're engaging in sophistry and using arguments you don't
think
are reasonable in the first place.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 19:56 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dennis,
I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies
on
Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact. Wikipedia is a project
to
build an encyclopaedia. By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are
reliable
sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own
criteria,
Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia. That is, it is currently in a
state
of
failure with respect to its own mission.
One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure
to
provide a collegial working atmosphere.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com
wrote:
"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for
Wikipedia
being
in
a failed state is precisely that it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a
reliable
source
"
You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece
of
evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which
people
here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe"
environment
for contributors and would-be contributors.
It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to
other
sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as
the
average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us
from
relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very
narrow
set
of
points of view. Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other
EB
articles
as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
> Vito > > This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most
important)
> pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is
precisely
that > it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a
reliable
> source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as > introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and
encyclopedias,
may
> be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an
encyclopaedia
on
one > of the most important tests one could imagine, namely
reliability.
And a
> reason for that is its lack of effective content management
policies
and
> mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called
that
being
an > editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a
redundant
synonym > for contributor). > > Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and
processes
> that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just
like
the
> encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that
situation,
it
would > be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it
must
be
to
> "trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and
processes
in
> place! > > Thrapostibongles > > >
-- Dennis C. During _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
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Martin
No, I'm saying that it's ridiculous to judge wikipedia on its policy that citing itself is disallowed.
Perhaps, then, rather than telling us what it is that you don't agree with, you would like to propound your own position, and in your own words. Do you believe that Wikipedia is a success? That it merits the description of "encyclopaedia"? In particular that it is reliable?
Thrapostibongles
On Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 07:43 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Martin
No, I'm saying that it's ridiculous to judge wikipedia on its policy that citing itself is disallowed.
Perhaps, then, rather than telling us what it is that you don't agree with, you would like to propound your own position, and in your own words.
I'm under no such obligation, and I'm not much inclined to argue with you on the details - but I do want to call out when something so egregiously off base is put forward as the assertion that wikipedia is unreliable *because* it has a policy that prevents it from citing itself, while the very opposite is true: that any source would completely destroy its credibility if it would cite itself and claim that is a sign of reliability.
That's the topic at hand here. My views on the reliability on wikipedia are off topic for that discussion. But I'll humor you and answer it anyway.
Do
you believe that Wikipedia is a success?
It accomplishes bringing true information to many people, which I'd a succes. It very occasionally brings false information to people, which is a problem.
Improvements to reach, localization, and reliably are all important.
That it merits the description
of "encyclopaedia"?
Yes, that's a reasonable description though it is broader in scope.
In particular that it is reliable?
Reliable is not a yes/no answer, but you can rely on wikipedia to be likely correct, much like more traditional encyclopedias. In addition, you can often rely on it to cite its sources, though not always, and arguably not often enough. You cant trust its editorial board though, as it has none, in stark contrast to traditional encyclopedias.
Thrapostibongles _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Martijn
I'm under no such obligation,
Indeed, none of us is under any such obligation, which is why it is somewhat pointless for one list member to issue orders to another, such as "Don't do that."
I do want to call out when something so egregiously off base is put forward as the assertion that wikipedia is unreliable *because* it has a policy that prevents it from citing itself,
And if anyone were to put forward that assertion, by all means call it out. You will have noticed, I'm sure that the initial post on this thread asserted that Wikipedia has a policy that prevents it from citing itself *because* it is unreliable. Quite a different thing.
Thrapostibongles
An element of our community which gives me hope, is that we are ready to earnestly engage with any input, even the tendentious. This is getting a bit repetitive, however, and as Martijn notes is not the best use of this list.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 6:06 PM Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia itself can never be more reliable than the sources it cites. If it's allowed to cite itself, then there is no "bottom" to lean on, and its quality would quickly drop.
That you conclude from that that wikipedia is unreliable and therefore failed is IMO such a silly proposition, that I dont know whether you seriously think this, in which case we should probably take this off list, or that you're engaging in sophistry and using arguments you don't think are reasonable in the first place.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 19:56 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dennis,
I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact. Wikipedia is a project to build an encyclopaedia. By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are reliable sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own
criteria,
Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia. That is, it is currently in a state
of
failure with respect to its own mission.
One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to provide a collegial working atmosphere.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com
wrote:
"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia
being
in
a failed state is precisely that it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
source
"
You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which people here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe"
environment
for contributors and would-be contributors.
It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow set
of
points of view. Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB
articles
as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Vito
This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most
important)
pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely
that
it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias,
may
be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia
on
one
of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability.
And a
reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies
and
mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that
being
an
editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant
synonym
for contributor).
Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and
processes
that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like
the
encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that situation, it
would
be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it must
be
to
"trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes
in
place!
Thrapostibongles
-- Dennis C. During _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I've never seen a self-citing encyclopedia.
Given its open editing structure it would be so easy to game the system by creating a series of cross-references. In short forbidding citing Wikipedia on Wikipedia avoids such short-circuits.
No text is 100% accurate, Wikipedia relies upon the bet that by widening the editorial community accuracy will asymptotically converge. Traditional textbooks, scholarly articles, any different knowledge aggregation system is characterized by a different funding premise.
In my opinion the "no autocitation" principle is a direct consequence of our fundamental principles, therefore a self-citing Wikipedia is possible, but it wouldn't longer be Wikipedia.
Vito
Il giorno lun 17 giu 2019 alle ore 19:55 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Dennis,
I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact. Wikipedia is a project to build an encyclopaedia. By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are reliable sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own criteria, Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia. That is, it is currently in a state of failure with respect to its own mission.
One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to provide a collegial working atmosphere.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com wrote:
"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being
in
a failed state is precisely that it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
source
"
You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which people here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe" environment for contributors and would-be contributors.
It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow set
of
points of view. Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB
articles
as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Vito
This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most
important)
pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely
that
it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias,
may
be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia on
one
of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability.
And a
reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies
and
mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that
being
an
editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant
synonym
for contributor).
Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and
processes
that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like
the
encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that situation, it
would
be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it must be
to
"trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes
in
place!
Thrapostibongles
-- Dennis C. During _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 8:18 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Let's look at the content first. Even on Wikipedia's own terms, it has failed. It is a principle that Wikipedia is founded on reliable sources, and by its own admission, Wikipedia itself is not such a source. That bears repetition -- a project aiming to be an encyclopaedia, that compares itself with Britannica, explicitly is not reliable. Foundation research has shown that about one fifth of Wikipedia articles are supported by references that are inadequate to support the text or simply are not there. That's about a million articles each on of the larger Wikpedias. Some thousands of those are biographies of living people and in view of the risk of defamation, no such articles should exist on Wikipedia at all. There are several thousand articles that are possible copyright violations: again such articles should not be there. And when I say "should not", I mean according to the rules adopted by the Wikipedia volunteer community itself.
The WMF has multiple, conflicting goals, just like the community. I don't think you should take it as a given that the WMF will take a position that aligns perfectly with what you want. In terms of unverified articles, consider ACTRIAL.[1] The community approved it in in 2011, but the WMF vetoed it for 6 years. Eventually, the trial was allowed to proceed; most of the feared negative effects did not materialize, and the WMF made the change permanent in response to overwhelming community support for it.
The community has been working on copyright violation issues for a long time.[2] There are probably ways the WMF could support improvements in this area. Maybe the WMF could even design some system that would magically solve the problem. But it's certainly not the community standing in the way.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_violations#Resources Also consider https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-November/128777.html back in 2013.
Hi Benjamin,
My name is Leila and I'm in the Research team in Wikimedia Foundation. Please see below.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 12:59 AM Benjamin Lees emufarmers@gmail.com wrote:
The community has been working on copyright violation issues for a long time.[2] There are probably ways the WMF could support improvements in this area. Maybe the WMF could even design some system that would magically solve the problem. But it's certainly not the community standing in the way.
While I understand that you brought this up as one example within a broader context and set of challenges, now that you have brought it up, I'd like to ask you for a specific guidance. Can you help me understand, in your view, what are some of the most pressing issues on this front from the perspective of those who work to detect and address copyright violations? (Not knowing a lot about this space, my first thought is to have better algorithms to detect copyright violations in Wikipedia (?) text (?) across many languages. Is this the most pressing issue?)
Some more info about how we work at the end of this email.[4]
Best, Leila
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_violations#Resources Also consider https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-November/128777.html back in 2013.
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Formal_collaborations [4] To give you some more information about the context I operate in:
* Part of the work of our team is to listen to community conversations in lists such as wikimedia-l to find research questions/directions to work on. If we can understand the problem space clearly and define research questions bsaed on, we can work on priorities with the corresponding communities and start the research on these questions ourselves or through our Formal Collaborations program [3].
* The types of problems that we can work (relatively) more quickly on are those for which the output can be an API, data-set, or knowledge.
* We won't start the research based on hearing the most pressing issues from you. If we see that based on your response there is a promising direction for further research, we will follow up (with the corresponding parts of the community involved in this space) to learn more about the general and specific problems.
Leila
Since I raised this particular issue,, I'll take the liberty of giving an answer to this question, even though you addressed it to Benjamin. The failure that I was pointing to was not the failure to identify copyright violations, but the failure to address the huge backlog of probable infringements identified at, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contributor_copyright_investigations... where there is a backlog of *thousands* of articles created by *one* user. In the absence of any coordinated management of the workload, at the current rate of progress it will take about another decade to clear this single case. My analysis is that the pressing issue here is precisely that there is no-one for whom this is a pressing issue: no-one is responsible for clearing up the mess, and if there were, there are no resources available to be allocated to it, and if there were, there is no way of deciding where to allocate those resources.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 1:24 PM Leila Zia leila@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Benjamin,
My name is Leila and I'm in the Research team in Wikimedia Foundation. Please see below.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 12:59 AM Benjamin Lees emufarmers@gmail.com wrote:
The community has been working on copyright violation issues for a long time.[2] There are probably ways the WMF could support improvements in this area. Maybe the WMF could even design some system that would magically solve the problem. But it's certainly not the community
standing
in the way.
While I understand that you brought this up as one example within a broader context and set of challenges, now that you have brought it up, I'd like to ask you for a specific guidance. Can you help me understand, in your view, what are some of the most pressing issues on this front from the perspective of those who work to detect and address copyright violations? (Not knowing a lot about this space, my first thought is to have better algorithms to detect copyright violations in Wikipedia (?) text (?) across many languages. Is this the most pressing issue?)
Some more info about how we work at the end of this email.[4]
Best, Leila
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_violations#Resources
Also consider
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-November/128777.html
back in 2013.
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Formal_collaborations [4] To give you some more information about the context I operate in:
- Part of the work of our team is to listen to community conversations
in lists such as wikimedia-l to find research questions/directions to work on. If we can understand the problem space clearly and define research questions bsaed on, we can work on priorities with the corresponding communities and start the research on these questions ourselves or through our Formal Collaborations program [3].
- The types of problems that we can work (relatively) more quickly on
are those for which the output can be an API, data-set, or knowledge.
- We won't start the research based on hearing the most pressing
issues from you. If we see that based on your response there is a promising direction for further research, we will follow up (with the corresponding parts of the community involved in this space) to learn more about the general and specific problems.
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi,
It has been suggested many times to ask Google for an access to their API for searching images, so that we could have a bot tagging copyright violations (no free access for automated search). That would the single best improvement in Wikimedia Commons workflow for years. And it would benefit all Wikipedia projects, big or small.
Regards, Yann
Le lun. 17 juin 2019 à 17:54, Leila Zia leila@wikimedia.org a écrit :
Hi Benjamin,
My name is Leila and I'm in the Research team in Wikimedia Foundation. Please see below.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 12:59 AM Benjamin Lees emufarmers@gmail.com wrote:
The community has been working on copyright violation issues for a long time.[2] There are probably ways the WMF could support improvements in this area. Maybe the WMF could even design some system that would magically solve the problem. But it's certainly not the community
standing
in the way.
While I understand that you brought this up as one example within a broader context and set of challenges, now that you have brought it up, I'd like to ask you for a specific guidance. Can you help me understand, in your view, what are some of the most pressing issues on this front from the perspective of those who work to detect and address copyright violations? (Not knowing a lot about this space, my first thought is to have better algorithms to detect copyright violations in Wikipedia (?) text (?) across many languages. Is this the most pressing issue?)
Some more info about how we work at the end of this email.[4]
Best, Leila
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_violations#Resources
Also consider
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-November/128777.html
back in 2013.
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Formal_collaborations [4] To give you some more information about the context I operate in:
- Part of the work of our team is to listen to community conversations
in lists such as wikimedia-l to find research questions/directions to work on. If we can understand the problem space clearly and define research questions bsaed on, we can work on priorities with the corresponding communities and start the research on these questions ourselves or through our Formal Collaborations program [3].
- The types of problems that we can work (relatively) more quickly on
are those for which the output can be an API, data-set, or knowledge.
- We won't start the research based on hearing the most pressing
issues from you. If we see that based on your response there is a promising direction for further research, we will follow up (with the corresponding parts of the community involved in this space) to learn more about the general and specific problems.
On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 06:28, Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:
It has been suggested many times to ask Google for an access to their API for searching images, so that we could have a bot tagging copyright violations (no free access for automated search). That would the single best improvement in Wikimedia Commons workflow for years. And it would benefit all Wikipedia projects, big or small.
Yann,
As you should remember, we asked Google for API access to their reverse image search system, years ago (maybe 2013?). They said that there isn't such an API any more (they killed it off in ~2012, I think), and that they wouldn't make a custom one for us. The only commercial alternative we found at the time would have cost us approximately US$3m a month at upload frequency for Commons then, and when contacted said they wouldn't do any discounts for Wikimedia. Obviously, this is far too much for the Foundation's budget (it would be even more now), and an inappropriate way to spend donor funds. Providing the service in-house would involve building a search index of the entire Internet's (generally non-free) images and media, which would cost a fortune and is totally incompatible with the mission of the movement. This was relayed out to Commons volunteers at the time, I'm pretty sure.
Obviously Google might have changed their mind, though it seems unlikely. I imagine that Google engineers and product owners don't follow this list, so it's unlikely that they will re-create the API without being asked directly.
J.
Google has been offering reverse image search as part of their vision API:
https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/internet-detection
The pricing is $3.50 per 1,000 queries for up to 5,000,000 queries per month:
https://cloud.google.com/vision/pricing
Above that quantity "Contact Google for more information":
https://cloud.google.com/contact/
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:23 AM James Forrester jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 06:28, Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:
It has been suggested many times to ask Google for an access to their API for searching images, so that we could have a bot tagging copyright violations (no free access for automated search). That would the single best improvement in Wikimedia Commons workflow for years. And it would benefit all Wikipedia projects, big or small.
Yann,
As you should remember, we asked Google for API access to their reverse image search system, years ago (maybe 2013?). They said that there isn't such an API any more (they killed it off in ~2012, I think), and that they wouldn't make a custom one for us. The only commercial alternative we found at the time would have cost us approximately US$3m a month at upload frequency for Commons then, and when contacted said they wouldn't do any discounts for Wikimedia. Obviously, this is far too much for the Foundation's budget (it would be even more now), and an inappropriate way to spend donor funds. Providing the service in-house would involve building a search index of the entire Internet's (generally non-free) images and media, which would cost a fortune and is totally incompatible with the mission of the movement. This was relayed out to Commons volunteers at the time, I'm pretty sure.
Obviously Google might have changed their mind, though it seems unlikely. I imagine that Google engineers and product owners don't follow this list, so it's unlikely that they will re-create the API without being asked directly.
J.
*James D. Forrester* (he/him http://pronoun.is/he or they/themself http://pronoun.is/they/.../themself) Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi,
Yes, James' pricing doesn't match the actual cost. We do not need to check all images uploaded to Commons, only the suspicious ones (small images without EXIF data). If we check 2,000 images a day (more than enough IMO), that would cost $7 a day, so $210 a month.
Regards, Yann
Le mar. 18 juin 2019 à 01:11, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com a écrit :
Google has been offering reverse image search as part of their vision API:
https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/internet-detection
The pricing is $3.50 per 1,000 queries for up to 5,000,000 queries per month:
https://cloud.google.com/vision/pricing
Above that quantity "Contact Google for more information":
https://cloud.google.com/contact/
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:23 AM James Forrester jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 06:28, Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:
It has been suggested many times to ask Google for an access to their
API
for searching images, so that we could have a bot tagging copyright violations (no free
access
for automated search). That would the single best improvement in Wikimedia Commons workflow
for
years. And it would benefit all Wikipedia projects, big or small.
Yann,
As you should remember, we asked Google for API access to their reverse image search system, years ago (maybe 2013?). They said that there isn't such an API any more (they killed it off in ~2012, I think), and that
they
wouldn't make a custom one for us. The only commercial alternative we
found
at the time would have cost us approximately US$3m a month at upload frequency for Commons then, and when contacted said they wouldn't do any discounts for Wikimedia. Obviously, this is far too much for the Foundation's budget (it would be even more now), and an inappropriate way to spend donor funds. Providing the service in-house would involve
building
a search index of the entire Internet's (generally non-free) images and media, which would cost a fortune and is totally incompatible with the mission of the movement. This was relayed out to Commons volunteers at
the
time, I'm pretty sure.
Obviously Google might have changed their mind, though it seems
unlikely. I
imagine that Google engineers and product owners don't follow this list,
so
it's unlikely that they will re-create the API without being asked
directly.
J.
*James D. Forrester* (he/him http://pronoun.is/he or they/themself http://pronoun.is/they/.../themself) Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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So Yann should we as a community just build something as a proof of concept? If we are talking less than 250 USD per month, I am sure we can scrounge up the money for a trial 6 month trial.
James
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 2:59 AM Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
Yes, James' pricing doesn't match the actual cost. We do not need to check all images uploaded to Commons, only the suspicious ones (small images without EXIF data). If we check 2,000 images a day (more than enough IMO), that would cost $7 a day, so $210 a month.
Regards, Yann
Le mar. 18 juin 2019 à 01:11, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com a écrit :
Google has been offering reverse image search as part of their vision
API:
https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/internet-detection
The pricing is $3.50 per 1,000 queries for up to 5,000,000 queries per month:
https://cloud.google.com/vision/pricing
Above that quantity "Contact Google for more information":
https://cloud.google.com/contact/
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:23 AM James Forrester jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 06:28, Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:
It has been suggested many times to ask Google for an access to their
API
for searching images, so that we could have a bot tagging copyright violations (no free
access
for automated search). That would the single best improvement in Wikimedia Commons workflow
for
years. And it would benefit all Wikipedia projects, big or small.
Yann,
As you should remember, we asked Google for API access to their reverse image search system, years ago (maybe 2013?). They said that there
isn't
such an API any more (they killed it off in ~2012, I think), and that
they
wouldn't make a custom one for us. The only commercial alternative we
found
at the time would have cost us approximately US$3m a month at upload frequency for Commons then, and when contacted said they wouldn't do
any
discounts for Wikimedia. Obviously, this is far too much for the Foundation's budget (it would be even more now), and an inappropriate
way
to spend donor funds. Providing the service in-house would involve
building
a search index of the entire Internet's (generally non-free) images and media, which would cost a fortune and is totally incompatible with the mission of the movement. This was relayed out to Commons volunteers at
the
time, I'm pretty sure.
Obviously Google might have changed their mind, though it seems
unlikely. I
imagine that Google engineers and product owners don't follow this
list,
so
it's unlikely that they will re-create the API without being asked
directly.
J.
*James D. Forrester* (he/him http://pronoun.is/he or they/themself http://pronoun.is/they/.../themself) Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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-- Jai Jagat 2020 Grand March Coordination Team https://www.jaijagat2020.org/ +91-74 34 93 33 58 (also WhatsApp) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Yes, that would be very welcome by all contributors reviewing images.
Regards, Yann
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019, 22:29 James Heilman, jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
So Yann should we as a community just build something as a proof of concept? If we are talking less than 250 USD per month, I am sure we can scrounge up the money for a trial 6 month trial.
James
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 2:59 AM Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
Yes, James' pricing doesn't match the actual cost. We do not need to check all images uploaded to Commons, only the
suspicious
ones (small images without EXIF data). If we check 2,000 images a day (more than enough IMO), that would cost
$7 a
day, so $210 a month.
Regards, Yann
Le mar. 18 juin 2019 à 01:11, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com a
écrit :
Google has been offering reverse image search as part of their vision
API:
https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/internet-detection
The pricing is $3.50 per 1,000 queries for up to 5,000,000 queries per month:
https://cloud.google.com/vision/pricing
Above that quantity "Contact Google for more information":
https://cloud.google.com/contact/
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:23 AM James Forrester jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 06:28, Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:
It has been suggested many times to ask Google for an access to
their
API
for searching images, so that we could have a bot tagging copyright violations (no free
access
for automated search). That would the single best improvement in Wikimedia Commons
workflow
for
years. And it would benefit all Wikipedia projects, big or small.
Yann,
As you should remember, we asked Google for API access to their
reverse
image search system, years ago (maybe 2013?). They said that there
isn't
such an API any more (they killed it off in ~2012, I think), and that
they
wouldn't make a custom one for us. The only commercial alternative we
found
at the time would have cost us approximately US$3m a month at upload frequency for Commons then, and when contacted said they wouldn't do
any
discounts for Wikimedia. Obviously, this is far too much for the Foundation's budget (it would be even more now), and an inappropriate
way
to spend donor funds. Providing the service in-house would involve
building
a search index of the entire Internet's (generally non-free) images
and
media, which would cost a fortune and is totally incompatible with
the
mission of the movement. This was relayed out to Commons volunteers
at
the
time, I'm pretty sure.
Obviously Google might have changed their mind, though it seems
unlikely. I
imagine that Google engineers and product owners don't follow this
list,
so
it's unlikely that they will re-create the API without being asked
directly.
J.
*James D. Forrester* (he/him http://pronoun.is/he or they/themself http://pronoun.is/they/.../themself) Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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The landscape has changed quite a bit since 2012, and there are a number of players that could offer a service like this by now. It may be worthwhile exploring them briefly (including but not limited to Google), if we believe this is important enough to invest time in (and I agree that there is a number of use cases from the community point of view at least).
Lodewijk
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:24 AM James Forrester jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 06:28, Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:
It has been suggested many times to ask Google for an access to their API for searching images, so that we could have a bot tagging copyright violations (no free access for automated search). That would the single best improvement in Wikimedia Commons workflow for years. And it would benefit all Wikipedia projects, big or small.
Yann,
As you should remember, we asked Google for API access to their reverse image search system, years ago (maybe 2013?). They said that there isn't such an API any more (they killed it off in ~2012, I think), and that they wouldn't make a custom one for us. The only commercial alternative we found at the time would have cost us approximately US$3m a month at upload frequency for Commons then, and when contacted said they wouldn't do any discounts for Wikimedia. Obviously, this is far too much for the Foundation's budget (it would be even more now), and an inappropriate way to spend donor funds. Providing the service in-house would involve building a search index of the entire Internet's (generally non-free) images and media, which would cost a fortune and is totally incompatible with the mission of the movement. This was relayed out to Commons volunteers at the time, I'm pretty sure.
Obviously Google might have changed their mind, though it seems unlikely. I imagine that Google engineers and product owners don't follow this list, so it's unlikely that they will re-create the API without being asked directly.
J.
*James D. Forrester* (he/him http://pronoun.is/he or they/themself http://pronoun.is/they/.../themself) Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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