[Foundation-l] Adding a comment section under every Wikipedia article

[Yao Ziyuan]

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 6:40 AM, Yao Ziyuan <yaoziyuan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 6:31 AM, Yao Ziyuan <yaoziyuan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 6:13 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> There is already a discussion page attached to every article. It's for
>>> discussing the article, though, rather than its topic.
>>
>> Besides this, another disadvantage of the current "Talk" tab is it
>> uses the wiki way to talk, not the typical "comment section" we see
>> under every YouTube video, Flickr image, Facebook status update, etc.
>> The wiki way to talk may be favored by the Wikipedia community, but is
>> really weird to the general public.
>>
>>>
>>> While we are more than a conventional encyclopedia, we are still an
>>> encyclopaedia and I don't think we should add job and product adverts to
>>> our articles.
>>>
>>> If people want to make friends, they can go to Facebook. If people want to
>>> find or contribute encyclopedic information (and, perhaps, make some
>>> friends along the way as an added bonus) then they should come to us.
>>
>> The unique merit of using Wikipedia as a discussion place is its
>> uniqueness. There are many "cat forums" on the Web, but they're
>> scattered all over the Web; in contrast, the Wikipedia article [[Cat]]
>> is a unique and prominent place for the topic "cat". If people want to
>> go to a centralized, unified place to talk about cats, they should
>> come to [[Cat]].
>
> This merit is even more evident when the topic is very specialized,
> e.g. [[Phonological history of English low back vowels]]. I bet there
> isn't a forum on the Web dedicated to this very specialized topic, and
> even if there is one, it can be very hard to find it with Google
> (because it may use a slightly different term to describe this topic).
> However, if every Wikipedia article has a corresponding comment
> section (actually a forum), people with this special interest
> ("phonological history of English low back vowels") will know where to
> go to find each other, forming a "special interest group" (SIG).

So this can mean very much for scientific research. For example,
imagine if there are two mathematicians in the world interested in the
same, very deep math concept, but they don't know each other. How do
we let them meet and collaborate with each other? With a comment
section under that math concept's Wikipedia article.

Take another example. Imagine there are two medical researchers
pursuing the same, very novel but very rarely known approach to a
major disease, but they don't know each other. How do we let them meet
and collaborate with each other? With a comment section under that
approach's Wikipedia article.

That's why I said this is of strategic interest to Wikipedia and the humankind.

>
>>
>>> On Jan 22, 2012 9:43 PM, "Yao Ziyuan" <yaoziyuan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello All,
>>>>
>>>> I just filed a feature request which I think is of strategic interest
>>>> to Wikipedia:
>>>>
>>>> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33889
>>>>
>>>> Bug 33889 - Request to add a comment section under every Wikipedia article
>>>>
>>>> By providing a comment section under every Wikipedia article, we can enable
>>>> people interested in that topic to talk with each other, make friends and
>>>> exchange external resources pertaining to that topic (e.g. books, products,
>>>> jobs, external references, etc.).
>>>>
>>>> Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia; it is also a very valuable "topic
>>>> navigation and positioning service" that navigates you to any conceivable
>>>> topic
>>>> in your mind, and once you're at that topic's Wikipedia article, the
>>>> article's
>>>> URL becomes a unique address that "positions" that topic. With this
>>>> position,
>>>> we can do many useful things (such as the ones mentioned in the previous
>>>> paragraph), just like we can do many useful things with a geographic
>>>> information system (GIS) such as Google Earth.
>>>>
>>>> There are many MediaWiki extensions that can add a comment section to every
>>>> Wikipedia article. Just go to
>>>> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_Matrix/AllExtensions and search
>>>> for
>>>> "comment" or "discussion".
>>>>
>>>> Best Regards,
>>>> Ziyuan Yao
>>>>
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