Thanks, that was insightful.
I'll be in touch off list if I feel the need.
Regards,
Rui
2014-05-21 22:18 GMT+02:00 quiddity pandiculation@gmail.com:
On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 3:01 PM, Rui Correia correia.rui@gmail.com wrote:
Hi
I realised a while back that I have in the past written to the Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List and to the Wikimedia Mailing List without een realising that I was writing to more than one list. I do now vaguely
recall
once getting a response saying that what I wanted discusses would best be discussed on the Foundation List. And I see there is also a Wikipedia information team. And how do these, if at all, overlap with the Village Pump? And the Portals?
Where could I find out more about what exactly is the purview of each of these forums?
Hi Rui, There are so many thousands of us, working on so many aspects of so many projects, in so many languages, that we have hundreds of communication channels. Mailing lists: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Overview IRC: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Channels Village pumps at each wiki (eg English): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VP Newsletters (eg English): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:News etc.
You can sign up for everything (and be deluged with information daily), or just ask each time, and hope someone friendly points you to the right specific location. ("You're not a real Wiki*edian, until you've made and learned from 50 mistakes", as someone told me years ago. :)
Basically, if it's a question about a single wiki, start off at that wiki's Help page or Village Pump. And starting off small, is often best, even for discussions that eventually grow to encompass multiple wikis. I don't know if there are any pages/guides detailing /when/ it is best to take a question to a mailing list.
Portals (in the Enwiki sense) aren't really discussion hubs themselves. They're crossroad signposts or maps, giving an overview of a topic's content and backstage work (generally targeted at readers and new editors).
Examples of the kind of issues and where to discuss:
- A simpler (automated) merge proposal template
- A simpler deletion proposal process
- Content issues that affect many articles (therefore talkpages are not
efficient)
For #3, the current method is WikiProjects. See further below, for more on those.
The Flow https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow project aims to solve many other aspects of these example issues. It's the "communication and collaboration" system, currently being developed, with an initial focus on user-to-user discussions. It's built with the idea of being able to easily embed a single "workflow" (for discussions, this would be a Topic-thread) across multiple pages, and even multiple wikis.
Later on (many months from now), they plan to create an abstract set of "workflow components", so that each wiki can hook together the various APIs and other processes they have available, to make tasks that are currently very complicated and multi-step into a more efficient and seamless endeavour.
Note that Flow is still in very early stages at the moment, and will change drastically over the coming months and years. There is a /lot/ of work to be done, and many avenues to explore. (E.g. There's a front-end overhaul coming in the next few weeks, based on the last few months of user-feedback, so the aesthetics will change drastically soon, with many further iterations and experiments to come afterwards.) Feedback on the talkpage is appreciated, with a long-term emphasis.
Some of these I have brought up before on one of the lists.
Right now I would like to make two further suggestions even if after this it turns out that I must do this on a different forum:
- A source ranking system - edit summaries are full of "not a reliable
source" justifications. Can we not create a ranking system where editors rank each source on a scale of 1-10 and a programme automatically calculates that source a reliability value?
Basically no, because humans are fallible and inconsistent! Unreliable [statements/articles] appear in generally reliable sources quite regularly. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PEREN#Define_reliable_sourcesfor more details, and links.
- a) "Keep me informed on this" - often one issue is discussed on a
multitude of pages (Bushmen/ Khoisan/ Khoi and San, is such an example)
and
it is difficult to keep track. Using any of the existing systems that
group
pages together - such as categories - could we not create a "theme/ issue watchlist" similar to the page wattchlist currently available?
The existing possibility, is to create a list of pages (eg. in your userspace/subpage, or a wikiproject subpage), and then click the "Related changes" link in the toolbox. This will produce a "watchlist-style view" of just those pages. E.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChangesLinked/User:Rui_Gabriel_C... all the recent changes, for pages linked within your userpage.
For grander dreams, there is the https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Watchlist_wishlist - We all want an upgrade (or a few alternatives) to the existing system, but it's a very complicated beast to grapple with. I believe most of the people with the necessary expertise are aware of the need, but lacking in available time. Small features get added or fixed regularly, but an overhaul is in the backburner/brainstorming stage. (I've got a draft email to send to the EE mailing list https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ee, some time soon, to nudge at this. :)
- b) As an add-on to the above, an actual means of communication to
contact all editors working on a specific these - Asian languages, or prehistoric art, for example.
Wikiprojects are the current solution for this. On the talkpage of most articles (at Enwiki) are WikiProject Banners, which link to related hubs for coordination of topic-based work. Eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Prehistoric_art and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Languages_of_Asia That's where you'll find the editors participating across broad ranges of articles. There is some interest in investigating better ways of matching editors to the topics that interest them, but it's still conceptual.
Best regards,
Rui
Hope that helps. :)
Quiddity (and partially with my liaison hat) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Quiddity _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe