Following up on Lila's Wikimania keynote: what platforms and devices should we have in mind when making decisions today or in the near future about Wikimedia content creation and delivery?
*Digital eyewear?
*Smart watches?
*3D displays?
*Large format displays?
*Health monitoring devices?
*Smart homes and buildings?
*Computer-led education systems in classrooms and remote learning?
*Driverless or semi-driverless cars?
*GPS-enabled devices of all sizes?
*Artificially intelligent consumers of Wikimedia content?
I would be interested in hearing others' thoughts.
Thanks,
Pine
On Sat, 16 Aug 2014, at 07:21, Pine W wrote:
Following up on Lila's Wikimania keynote: what platforms and devices should we have in mind when making decisions today or in the near future about Wikimedia content creation and delivery?
also think of something outside of web browser ? and then also outside of http protocol ?
svetlana
@svetlana, I thought http is rather being strengthened via REST? The Internet of things all will better work with HTTP.
From your list of items, @pine, I will recommend, smart watches, AI, and
smart homes and buildings.
But why would Wikimedia wanna include the yet-to-well-surface technologies when mere edit conflicts isn't solved on the Wiki?
The Wikipedia app is currently under good development and I think its doing great.
Your question is worth considering, but in reality, I don't think Wikimedia will be up to the task, even if one from your list is chosen.
Just pondering over how many months, if not years its taken to get the Wikipedia app in shape, not to mention the Wikimedia commons app that's seems to have been abandoned as it hardly enjoys updates, makes me wonder if Wikimedia will ever finish a native application should they wanna even try AI.
For me, if I should suggest what should be Wikimedia's biggest priority today will be to revamp the MediaWiki system from ground up.
rexford | google.com/+Nkansahrexford | sent from smartphone On Aug 16, 2014 12:43 AM, "svetlana" svetlana@fastmail.com.au wrote:
On Sat, 16 Aug 2014, at 07:21, Pine W wrote:
Following up on Lila's Wikimania keynote: what platforms and devices
should
we have in mind when making decisions today or in the near future about Wikimedia content creation and delivery?
also think of something outside of web browser ? and then also outside of http protocol ?
svetlana
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hi Rexford,
What objectives would we achieve if we were to "revamp the MediaWiki system from ground up"? Even if we pretend that we have infinite financial and human resources to do this, I am not sure what we would accomplsh, and we would likely introduce a lot of new reliability and security bugs.
Perhaps Maryana can give us an update about the Commons app, so I'm pinging her.
Pine On Aug 15, 2014 7:46 PM, "Nkansah Rexford" nkansahrexford@gmail.com wrote:
@svetlana, I thought http is rather being strengthened via REST? The Internet of things all will better work with HTTP.
From your list of items, @pine, I will recommend, smart watches, AI, and smart homes and buildings.
But why would Wikimedia wanna include the yet-to-well-surface technologies when mere edit conflicts isn't solved on the Wiki?
The Wikipedia app is currently under good development and I think its doing great.
Your question is worth considering, but in reality, I don't think Wikimedia will be up to the task, even if one from your list is chosen.
Just pondering over how many months, if not years its taken to get the Wikipedia app in shape, not to mention the Wikimedia commons app that's seems to have been abandoned as it hardly enjoys updates, makes me wonder if Wikimedia will ever finish a native application should they wanna even try AI.
For me, if I should suggest what should be Wikimedia's biggest priority today will be to revamp the MediaWiki system from ground up.
rexford | google.com/+Nkansahrexford | sent from smartphone On Aug 16, 2014 12:43 AM, "svetlana" svetlana@fastmail.com.au wrote:
On Sat, 16 Aug 2014, at 07:21, Pine W wrote:
Following up on Lila's Wikimania keynote: what platforms and devices
should
we have in mind when making decisions today or in the near future about Wikimedia content creation and delivery?
also think of something outside of web browser ? and then also outside of http protocol ?
svetlana
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hey,
Hi Rexford,
What objectives would we achieve if we were to "revamp the MediaWiki system from ground up"? Even if we pretend that we have infinite financial and human resources to do this, I am not sure what we would accomplsh, and we would likely introduce a lot of new reliability and security bugs.
I can't answer for Rexford, though can provide you with a reply of my own.
You are quite right that the resources needed to rewrite a software as big and complex as MediaWiki from ground up in one go are not realistic. I think this is simply not feasible and a bad idea to begin with. There is plenty of good writing on the topic of migrating away from legacy systems, often cautioning against "the big rewrite".
That does not mean that moving away from the current platform is a bad idea. Of course there needs to be good reason to do so. Is the current platform causing problems severe enough to warrant changing direction? Look at all the effort being put into the software surrounding Wikipedia and associated projects. A lot of enthusiastic and smart people are spending plenty of time on it. So how come progress has slowed down so much? How come we cannot easy add new functionality? What exactly is causing all this effort to be spend so inefficiently? And how much more would we be able to achieve if those issues where not there?
One concern with rewriting or redesigning things that I've seen outlined often is that it is easy to just end up at the same place again. If no effort is put into identifying why the old system ended up in a bad state, then it's naive to expect the new one will not suffer the same fate.
and we would likely introduce a lot of new reliability and security bugs.
Is that something inherent to writing new software or migrating away from legacy systems? Or is that simply what would happen if such a task was attempted without altering development practices first?
Cheers
-- Jeroen De Dauw - http://www.bn2vs.com Software craftsmanship advocate Evil software architect at Wikimedia Germany ~=[,,_,,]:3
Thanks Jeroen, you just reminded me I have a thread here to respond to. I agree with you points.
I said revamp the mediawiki from ground up because I think the mediawiki was developed some years ago, and its obvious there are many changes that have taken effect that need adapting to.
"Revamping" here doesn't mean deleting all the code for mediawiki, and starting from the first function name { bla bla } thing and coming up. However I mean sitting back, and spending time to extract the actual portion that is required for the basic functioning of the wiki, remove the portions that are not needed, adapt it for today's best practices and features, and as the word "Revamp" means: *"give new and improved form, structure, or appearance to."*
The WikiWand guys did a similar thing to the look of Wikipedia, and I think they're in the right direction. Adapting to changes on the wikis, I think its one of the hard-to-change things the wikimedia ever want to do, and same with the MediaWiki system.
Though most of the changes to the WikiWand thing were UI based in particular, the MediaWiki system can also take a similar approach and "revamp" things up to improve speed and efficiency, and will give room for more possibilities, I think.
I think when the media wiki is re-made today, decisions that'll go into it will be different from the ones made in its beginning.
rexford | google.com/+Nkansahrexford | sent from smartphone On Aug 18, 2014 10:17 PM, "Jeroen De Dauw" jeroendedauw@gmail.com wrote:
Hey,
Hi Rexford,
What objectives would we achieve if we were to "revamp the MediaWiki
system
from ground up"? Even if we pretend that we have infinite financial and human resources to do this, I am not sure what we would accomplsh, and we would likely introduce a lot of new reliability and security bugs.
I can't answer for Rexford, though can provide you with a reply of my own.
You are quite right that the resources needed to rewrite a software as big and complex as MediaWiki from ground up in one go are not realistic. I think this is simply not feasible and a bad idea to begin with. There is plenty of good writing on the topic of migrating away from legacy systems, often cautioning against "the big rewrite".
That does not mean that moving away from the current platform is a bad idea. Of course there needs to be good reason to do so. Is the current platform causing problems severe enough to warrant changing direction? Look at all the effort being put into the software surrounding Wikipedia and associated projects. A lot of enthusiastic and smart people are spending plenty of time on it. So how come progress has slowed down so much? How come we cannot easy add new functionality? What exactly is causing all this effort to be spend so inefficiently? And how much more would we be able to achieve if those issues where not there?
One concern with rewriting or redesigning things that I've seen outlined often is that it is easy to just end up at the same place again. If no effort is put into identifying why the old system ended up in a bad state, then it's naive to expect the new one will not suffer the same fate.
and we would likely introduce a lot of new reliability and security bugs.
Is that something inherent to writing new software or migrating away from legacy systems? Or is that simply what would happen if such a task was attempted without altering development practices first?
Cheers
-- Jeroen De Dauw - http://www.bn2vs.com Software craftsmanship advocate Evil software architect at Wikimedia Germany ~=[,,_,,]:3 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Sat, 16 Aug 2014, at 12:45, Nkansah Rexford wrote:
[...] The Wikipedia app is currently under good development and I think its doing great.
We don't need apps. We need mobile websites which work as good as an app does. Oh, the waste of effort.
I truly pledge you to work together to make a website which is so good that an 'app' is redundant.
svetlana
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 11:21 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
*Artificially intelligent consumers of Wikimedia content?
I would be interested in hearing others' thoughts.
Not thinking big enough, although AI is close to the mark. We should work on biological implants. Why use an app? Or a smart car? With a biological implant in the brain you wouldn't even have to *look things up* on wiki, you'd just *know them to be true*
What could possibly go wrong?
-Chad
Z0mg the Illuminati will superprotect chemtrails in our brains!!1!11!!
Vito
Inviato con AquaMail per Android http://www.aqua-mail.com
Il 16 agosto 2014 10:10:50 Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com ha scritto:
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 11:21 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
*Artificially intelligent consumers of Wikimedia content?
I would be interested in hearing others' thoughts.
Not thinking big enough, although AI is close to the mark. We should work on biological implants. Why use an app? Or a smart car? With a biological implant in the brain you wouldn't even have to *look things up* on wiki, you'd just *know them to be true*
What could possibly go wrong?
-Chad _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 08/16/2014 04:09 AM, Chad wrote:
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 11:21 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
*Artificially intelligent consumers of Wikimedia content?
I would be interested in hearing others' thoughts.
Not thinking big enough, although AI is close to the mark. We should work on biological implants. Why use an app? Or a smart car? With a biological implant in the brain you wouldn't even have to *look things up* on wiki, you'd just *know them to be true*
What could possibly go wrong?
-Chad
INCREDIBLY OFFTOPIC: In 2011 I gave a talk called "Learn Tech Management in 45 Minutes" that included an idea like this as an example! http://opensourcebridge.org/wiki/2011/Learn_Tech_Management_In_45_Minutes#Pe...
This is also a talk in which I talk about the Drake equation, Betamax, Max Weber, my older sister, and the S-curve of innovation, quote from the Communist Manifesto, and constantly refer to executives as "suits". The transcript still makes me laugh so you might like it too.
BACK ON TOPIC: So, one reason we have an Individual Engagement Grants program https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG#ieg-learn is to support innovative approaches to solving key problems for the Wikimedia movement. So go forth and innovate! (Next IEG round has a 30 September deadline for proposals.)
I am enspoused to a science fiction writer. Just now we brainstormed a bunch of ideas: Browser plugins, wearables, weekly call-in radio shows/editathons about particular topics (ask an expert for info that's missing and add it to articles), Twitter bots that remind people they can edit Wikipedia if they link to a Wikipedia page and comment on it, pseudo-AI/expert systems to help give constructive criticism to new editors, distributing hardware to potential users, integrating Wikipedia editing into language classes for more obscure languages, data mining from bibliographies & other primary sources to synthesize stubs for entries that should exist but don't https://github.com/brainwane/missing-from-wikipedia , implementing the Ada Initiative's recommendations http://adainitiative.org/2013/11/wikimedia-diversity-conference/ , support for audio/video chat for dispute resolution and collaboration.... (OFFTOPIC AGAIN: My spouse's novel "Constellation Games" http://constellation.crummy.com/ has a minor character who edits Wikipedia.)
OK, maybe I am being rambly and silly right now because I'm about to go on vacation. I'll be offline for a few weeks, back on September 10th. You know what would be great while I'm offline? Offline access to Wikipedia, via a mobile app! (I finally got back ontopic! Yay me!)
Best wishes, Sumana Harihareswara
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 5:38 AM, Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah@wikimedia.org
wrote:
You know what would be great while I'm offline? Offline access to Wikipedia, via a mobile app!
http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Software has an Android app. :)
imo this is an intereating question but too far reaching. simpler to understand and keep in mind are "minimum display size, resolution", "viewer and editing application". with it automatically restricts itself to a couple of operating systems, browsers and native apps.
rupert Am 15.08.2014 23:21 schrieb "Pine W" wiki.pine@gmail.com:
Following up on Lila's Wikimania keynote: what platforms and devices should we have in mind when making decisions today or in the near future about Wikimedia content creation and delivery?
*Digital eyewear?
*Smart watches?
*3D displays?
*Large format displays?
*Health monitoring devices?
*Smart homes and buildings?
*Computer-led education systems in classrooms and remote learning?
*Driverless or semi-driverless cars?
*GPS-enabled devices of all sizes?
*Artificially intelligent consumers of Wikimedia content?
I would be interested in hearing others' thoughts.
Thanks,
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org