[Foundation-l] Lack of research on Wikipedia

Sun Aug 16 09:19:07 UTC 2009

Hoi,
I am very much a proponent of those who consider Wikipedia one project with
many iterations in a language project and community. For me it means that
there are several basic requirements for all Wikipedias. The content being
freely licensed and of a neutral point of view are core values I also
consider it essential that Wikipedia is open to new people who want to
contribute to what we already do, as such I would welcome new projects that
fit in the aims of the Wikimedia Foundation.

As to people like Siebrand, he performs several crucial functions for
MediaWiki and Wikipedia and I consider him one of the most important people
in and for the Wikimedia Foundation. He plays a central role in
translatewiki.net, with Raymond_ he commits the localisations to SVN after
doing some quality assurance to the localisations. As a consequence of his
internationalisation and QA work he is the one of the most prolific
contributors to MediaWiki. He also runs Siebot for ages and he does not only
but also work on the interwikilinks that bring our projects together.

In answer to your question, the activities that Siebrand is involved in are
best done in a collaborative way. Actually given the nature of Wikipedia it
is the only way.
Thanks,
       Gerard

2009/8/16 Pavlo Shevelo <pavlo.shevelo at gmail.com>

> Hello Gerard,
>
> Regarding you main point call for research I have nothing to say but
> Hear! Hear!! HEAR!!! ;)
>
> Some small example (casestudy): recently I <s>requested</s> asked for
> as much statistics data about WMF board elections as possible just
> because I'm eager to make series  of researches and possibly make them
> regular if not neverending - like 24*7 dashboards or something like
> that.
>
> There is one thing which might be either sorta objection to what
> you've wrote (to one aspect of that) or proposal for research agenda:
> Are all Wikipedias really separate projects or all of them are
> segments of one single international project? Certainly 'single
> project' model provides very different level of different segments
> autonomy  and some (many? most?) of them are loosely coupled yet (?or
> forever?).
> Let me mention Siebrand in this context as well (as you did): who is
> Siebrand and his SieBot for, say, Ukrainian Wikipedia?
> Should we say (shout? :) ) something like "Siebrand, go home and take
> your bot with you! We have *our* bots and it's Ukrainian-made bots who
> has a right to process Ukrainian Wikipedia"? ;-P
> ... or just the opposite - interwiki maintaining (beginning from deep
> interwiki research by the way) is concern of integral pan-Wikipedia
> community so the only choice is teamwork with  Siebrand?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Pavlo Shevelo
>
> On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Gerard
> Meijssen<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > For me while interesting, it is hardly new and therefore not that
> > interesting what people like Ed H Chi write about Wikipedia. They do not
> > write about Wikipedia, they write about the English language Wikipedia.
> > Invariably news written about Wikipedia concentrates on just one of over
> 260
> > projects. It diminishes what Wikipedia is about and it ignores important
> > things that are happening.
> >
> > I would be interested in more study looking at the "other" wikipedias.
> This
> > is where all kinds of other phenomena exist.
> >
> > Yesterday Siebrand observed that there is a group of languages that have
> > solid localisations and, the current localisation rally makes this group
> > stand out even more.  We have the impression that this coincides with the
> > vitality of projects; German French Dutch are top performers in
> localisation
> > they have a healthy community and provide a great Wikipedia. For
> languages
> > like Spanish Turkish Swedish Italian it is still possible for people to
> take
> > part in the translatewiki.net localisation rally. People who participate
> on
> > languages like Estonian and Khmer find that they have to concentrate on
> > doing the most used and MediaWiki core messages first (our rationale
> being
> > that our Wikipedia readers are best served in this way.
> >
> > With a sample size fof 260, it becomes possible to do research into the
> > effect of localisation and the performance of a project. As
> > LocalisationUpdate is being tested for use in the WMF, timely delivery of
> > localisations becomes a reality once it is implemented. This will give
> the
> > numbers of localisation and performance a much more direct relation with
> > each other... The question is, if someone is interested in the numbers
> > provided by such research..
> >
> > It is known for languages like Bangla that Wikipedia is the biggest
> resource
> > in that language in that language, I can imagine that this is true for
> other
> > languages as well. When a Wikipedia has such a status, it changes the
> > relevance of that Wikipedia for scientists who study thea language. It is
> > interesting to learn what the effects are on the people who use the
> internet
> > in these languages. With Wikipedia being the biggest resource does this
> > populate the Google search results and, does this make the Internet more
> of
> > a worthwhile experience?
> >
> > We know that things like sources, NPOV, BLP are particularly relevant on
> our
> > biggest projects. On our smaller projects these things do not get the
> same
> > attention. Here it is more important to have articles in the first place.
> > The make-up of these communities is likely to be utterly different as
> well.
> > Would it not be nice to understand how our projects are populated and
> study
> > how it evolves over time? At what stage all kinds of policies start to
> kick
> > in?
> >
> > Research, the numbers they provide are important on many levels. They
> > indicate issues, they indicate where we want to put our resources. The
> lack
> > of research on the other Wikipedias make the other Wikipedias invisible,
> > issues particular to other languages do not get attention and
> consequently
> > resources needed to address issues are not available.
> >
> > My argument is that there is a lack of research on Wikipedia, Wikipedia
> as a
> > whole would benefit from research and indeed where the English
> Wikipedia's
> > growth is slowing down, there is plenty of room for growth elsewhere of
> > standard encyclopaedic information in the other projects. This in turn
> will
> > bring up many subjects that en.wp does not cover. The existence of
> articles
> > on subjects not covered in en.wp are indicative of a bias and once en.wp
> > starts to cover these subjects it will improve its neutral point of
> view..
> > Consequently ALL our Wikipedias including en.wp will benefit from
> research
> > on the "other" Wikipedias.
> > Thanks,
> >      GerardM
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