[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Building an academic network for Wikimedia

Mon Mar 31 22:03:00 UTC 2008

Anyone feel inspired by this for en:wp?

- d.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>
Date: 31 Mar 2008 18:21
Subject: [Foundation-l] Building an academic network for Wikimedia
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>

After the third "experiment" on sr.wp, I have to say that cooperation
 between particular professors, their students and one of Wikimedia
 projects is working very well.

 The first project started with professors Cvetana Krstev and Dusko
 Vitas from Mathematical and Philological faculties in Belgrade. As I
 am not involved in that project (and I don't know for details), I will
 skip it. I only know that a number of students' works in computational
 linguistics were published on Serbian Wikipedia.

 The second was initiated by professor Slobdan Macura (a Wikipedian,
 too), who asked me to make a presentation of Wikipedia to students of
 the third and the fourth year of physical chemistry. This cooperation
 gave to us a number of very good articles about chemistry of proteins
 [1]. While half of them are translated from the English Wikipedia, the
 rest are original encyclopedic works made by students. For example, an
 article about Anfinsen's dogma is much better in Serbian [2] than in
 English [3].

 When I started to finish my studies in linguistics (last September), I
 found that some of my professors are interested in adapting their own
 rules to contribution to Wikipedia. The best cooperation I made with
 my professor in sociolinguistics, Jelena Filipovic. Her students have
 to make three types of works: three short forms, usually what a
 student thinks about something, one longer form on what student thinks
 about one of specific texts and a seminar work, which should be the
 longest form.

 (By accident, at the same time Linguistlist called linguists to
 contribute articles in sociolinguistics.)

 Professor's and mine first target was to change three short forms to
 three articles. Almost a half of the students (something less than 20
 of something more than 40) opted in to that change. And not only that:
 a couple of them opted to change their seminar work to one longer
 article.

 A week ago the first short forms were finished. Two students sent to
 me articles. Yesterday I started to analyze them in depth. And I have
 to say that articles are real success! I processed the first three
 articles and here is the report:

 - Dialect atlas (or "Linguistic map" -- two names for the same term).
 Article in Serbian [4] is much longer than article in English [5].
 - Linguistic interview. Article in Serbian exists [6], while article
 in English doesn't exist.
 - Language variable (a fairly important linguistic term) now exists in
 Serbian [7], but doesn't exist in English.

 The main consequence of such work is that we are able to move our sum
 of knowledge at the next level. While a number of smaller Wikipedias
 have problems with very basic articles, which may be covered by high
 school students, thanks to such cooperation we are able to put into
 Wikipedia more specific knowledge.

 * * *

 However, the situation is not sustainable. While I am able and I am
 willing to work with some number of professors, I am not able cover
 even my faculty alone. While initiating cooperation is a time
 consuming task, it is a temporary task. I am willing to spend a couple
 of weeks or a couple of months in making a cooperation alive, but when
 an initiation of cooperation is finished, I may start do work on other
 one.

 However, if I have to take care separately about all groups all the
 time, I would be able to work with five or ten groups, but not much
 more.

 Instead of that kind of organization, I think that it would be much
 better to make some kind of a global "academic network for Wikimedia".
 For the first time it should be one network for sharing resources: to
 explain how to find priorities for writing articles, to make some
 comprehensive manuals for professors and students, to show to
 professors and students how to find an online help as well as how to
 find real-life help.

 Also, such network may be very useful for professors and students:
 While at the first time such network would be able to connect a
 linguist from Serbia with a biologist from Germany (which is not so
 useful), as time is passing, this network would be able to make
 connections between people who are working on the same topics.
 Actually, if people from Linguistlist (those who already made calls
 for contributing to Wikipedia) are interested in joining to such
 network, we will already make the first connections between linguists.

 * * *

 I am not sure was here a similar talk. However, I know that Wikimedian
 community has a number of university professors and other experts. And
 those professors and experts should be the front persons of such
 network. Of course, I am willing to help, but we need to make a group
 of relevant people who would attract other professors and experts to
 join the group (and groups in the future).

 * * *

 There is one anecdote about Stalin. Some of the persons in charge for
 foreign relations came to him:
 - An emissary from Vatican came. What should we do?
 - How many tanks do they have?
 - None.
 - Take them away!

 So, whenever someone came with an idea to add some number of articles
 to Serbian Wikipedia, I was making jokes which were beginning with
 "How many tanks do thay have?" -- in the sense of a number of
 articles, of course.

 While it is obvious that 10 good articles are much better than 100
 bad, it is, also, obvious that we have to find a way how to make a
 "mass production" of good articles. When I say "mass production", I
 think about a systematic effort for improving quality of our project.

 And if there are three articles covered systematically by students on
 Serbian Wikipedia which are better than corresponding three articles
 on English Wikipedia (actually, two of them don't exist), then it is
 obvious that all Wikipedias need such systematic effort.

 I presented above my idea for making such systematic effort. It came
 to my mind yesterday, which means that it is far from a rounded idea.
 I didn't even thought about other possibilities. So, a question for
 discussion here is: Do you have some better idea? Does such thing
 exist? Do you think that this idea is good enough for implementation?
 If so, are there people (especially professors and experts) who are
 willing to participate?

 * * *

 [1] - The list of articles and students who made them is here:
 http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BB:%D0%A4%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D1%85%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0/%D0%A4%D0%A4%D0%A5
 [2] - http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BD%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0_%D1%85%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B0
 [3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfinsen%27s_dogma
 [4] - http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijalektolo%C5%A1ki_atlas
 [5] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_atlas
 [6] - http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intervju_(lingvistika)
 [7] - http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jezi%C4%8Dka_varijacija

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