Fantastic article on citation and the written word......."When Knowledge
Isn't Written, Does It Still Count? That NYT article was wrtitten By NOAM
I almost sent a congratulations to Tinu Cherian for a well written piece!
I fully support other forms of audio and other visual references and have a
few decades worth of material I'd be happy to share when I find the time to
index it well and convert it to a digital format.
Regards
Harriet
See our work at: monsoongreay.wordpress where we use digital stories to
record childrens voices.
Harriet Vidyasagar
INDIA: 91-99011 66276
USA: 1-301-649-2240
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 2:31 AM, <
wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: [Press] : New York Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written,
Does It Still Count?" (Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia)
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 12:01:49 +0530 (IST)
From: Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia <mahitgar(a)yahoo.co.in>
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : New York Times : "When
Knowledge Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <1312871509.19166.YahooMailRC(a)web137618.mail.in.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Dear All
NewYork Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowled…
This is a nice article.
1) On mr-wiki I am trying to convince the community to be more flexible on
info
coming from rural Maharashtra. For an example in an village related
articles
some one writes about which farm produce which educational institutions are
there, we need not ask reference for such aspects.In rural India as there
are
good institution which we can take note of but risk part is there are
equal or
more number of fake institutions and they may end up taking undue benefit
of
having mention of their institution in fooling rest of the ignorant
population
that is the risk.
2) Way back on strategy wiki I did put a Proposal:Audio/visual
Presentation
Competition While there I did not get anticipated support but I wish
Wikimedia
India Chapter and/Or India program and Indic wikipedians revisit this
proposal
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Audio/visual_Presentation_Compe…
Regards
User Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia
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Subject: Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 38, Issue 13
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: [Press] : New York Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written,
Does It Still Count?" (wheredevelsdare(a)hotmail.com)
2. Re: [Press] : New York Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written,
Does It Still Count?" (Naveen Francis)
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 05:00:39 +0000
From: <wheredevelsdare(a)hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : New York Times : "When
Knowledge Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
To: Wikipedia India Mailing List
<wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
Sure - offline or non-english refs are accepted AGF!
From: naveenpf(a)gmail.com
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 07:31:47 +0530
To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : New York Times : "When
Knowledge
Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
Nice article ... :)
Hi Tinu,
One doubt in referencing; can we keep text indic languages as reference in
English wikipedia ?
Naveen Francis
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On 8 August 2011 23:13, CherianTinu Abraham <tinucherian(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
NewYork Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowled…
?MAKING fun of Wikipedia is so 2007,? a French journalist said recently to
Sue
Gardner, the executive director of the foundation that runs the Wikipedia
project.
And so Ms. Gardner, in turn, told an auditorium full of Wikipedia
contributors
and supporters on Thursday in Haifa, Israel, the host city for the seventh
annual Wikimania conference, where meetings and presentations focus on the
world?s most used, and perhaps least understood, online reference work.
Once routinely questioned about its reliability ? what do you mean, anyone
can
edit it? ? the site is now used every month by upwards of 400 million
people
worldwide. But with influence and respect come responsibility, and lately
Wikipedia has been criticized from without and within for reflecting a
Western,
male-dominated mindset similar to the perspective behind the encyclopedias
it
has replaced.
Seeing Wikipedia as The Man, in so many words, is so 2011.
And that?s a problem for an encyclopedia that wants to grow. Some critics
of
Wikipedia believe that the whole Western tradition of footnotes and sourced
articles needs to be rethought if Wikipedia is going to continue to gather
converts beyond its current borders. And that, in turn, invites an entirely
new
debate about what constitutes knowledge in different parts of the world and
how
a Western institution like Wikipedia can capitalize on it.
Achal Prabhala, an adviser to Ms. Gardner?s Wikimedia Foundation who lives
and
writes in Bangalore, India, has made perhaps the most trenchant criticism
in a
video project, ?People are Knowledge,? that he presented in Haifa (along
with
its clunky subtitle, ?Exploring alternative methods of citation for
Wikipedia?).
The film, which was made largely with a $20,000 grant from the Wikimedia
Foundation, spends time showing what has been lost to Wikipedia because of
stickling rules of citation and verification. If Wikipedia purports to
collect
the ?sum of all human knowledge,? in the words of one of its founders,
Jimmy
Wales, that, by definition, means more than printed knowledge, Mr. Prabhala
said.
In the case of dabba kali, a children?s game played in the Kerala state of
India, there was a Wikipedia article in the local language, Malayalam, that
included photos, a drawing and a detailed description of the rules, but no
sources to back up what was written. Other than, of course, the 40 million
people who played it as children.
There is no doubt, he said, that the article would have been deleted from
English Wikipedia if it didn?t have any sources to cite. Those are the
rules of
the game, and those are the rules he would like to change, or at least
bend, or,
if all else fails, work around.
?There is this desire to grow Wikipedia in parts of the world,? he said,
adding
that ?if we don?t have a more generous and expansive citation policy, the
current one will prove to be a massive roadblock that you literally can?t
get
past. There is a very finite amount of citable material, which means a very
finite number of articles, and there will be no more.?
Mr. Prabhala, 38, who grew up in India and then attended American
universities,
has been an activist on issues of intellectual property, starting with the
efforts in South Africa to free up drugs that treat H.I.V. In the film, he
gives
other examples of subjects ? an alcohol produced in a village,
Ga-Sabotlane, in
Limpopo, South Africa, and a popular hopscotch-type children?s game,
tshere-tshere ? beyond print documentation and therefore beyond Wikipedia?s
true-and-tried method.
There are whole cultures, he said, that have little to no printed material
to
cite as proof about the way life is lived.
?Publishing is a system of power and I mean that in a completely pleasant,
accepting sense,? he said mischievously. ?But it leaves out people.?
But Mr. Prabhala offers a solution: he and the video?s directors, Priya Sen
and
Zen Marie, spoke with people in African and Indian villages either in
person or
over the phone and had them describe basic activities. These recordings
were
then uploaded and linked to the article as sources, and suddenly an article
that
seems like it could be a personal riff looks a bit more academic.
For example, in his interview with a South African villager who explained
how to
make the alcoholic drink, morula, she repeatedly says that it is best if
she
demonstrates the process. When the fruit is ready, said the villager,
Philipine
Moremi, according to the project?s transcript of her phone conversation,
?we pry
them open. We are going to show you how it is done. Once they are peeled,
we
seal them to ferment and then we drink.? The idea of treating personal
testimony
as a source for Wikipedia is still controversial, and reflects the concerns
that
dominated the encyclopedia project six years ago, when arguably its very
existence was threatened.
After a series of hoaxes, culminating in a Wikipedia article in 2005 that
maligned the newspaper editor John Seigenthaler for no discernible reason
other
than because a Wikipedia contributor could, the site tried to ensure that
every
statement could be traced to a source.
Then there is the rule ?no original research,? which was meant to say that
Wikipedia doesn?t care if you are writing about the subway station you
visit
every day, find someone who has written reliably on the color of the walls
there.
?The natural thing is getting more and more accurate, locking down
articles,
raising the bar on sources,? said Andrew Lih, an associate professor of
journalism at the University of Southern California, who was an early
contributor to Wikipedia and has written a history of its rise. ?Isn?t it
great
we have so many texts online??
But what works for the most developed societies, he said, won?t necessarily
work
for others. ?Lots of knowledge is not Googleable,? he said, ?and is not in
a
digital form.?
Mr. Lih said that he could see the Wikipedia project suddenly becoming
energized
by the process of documenting cultural practices around the world, or down
the
street.
Perhaps Mr. Prabhala?s most challenging argument is that by being
text-focused,
and being locked into the Encyclopedia Britannica model, Wikipedia risks
being
behind the times.
An 18-year-old is comfortable using ?objects of trust that have been
created on
the Internet,? he said, and ?Wikipedia isn?t taking advantage of that.?
And, he
added, ?it is quite possible that for the 18-year-old of today that
Wikipedia
looks like his father?s project. Or the kind of thing his father might be
interested in.?
Ouch.
RegardsTinu Cherian
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