Hoi,
I would rather answer a different question: What would it take for us to
share the sum of all knowledge available to us to any and all people in any
and all languages they can read.
The benefit of such a marketing approach and not an antagonistic approach
is that English Wikipedia may do what it does, it may even fit in with what
is shown to work. When we are to share the sum of all the knowledge
available to us, we seek out where this information is and, how we open it
up best to our public. Let me be clear, so far the English Wikipedia has
been my go to project to liberate information to Wikidata. Once it it
there, it becomes easier to provide proper disambiguation and prevent false
friends to pop up later. Maintenance is easier; you do it only once for any
and all our projects.
We have come a long way in getting to the point where Commons is truly
multilingual.. My favourite example is "appelmoes" [1]. What we now really
need is have marketeers to opening Commons up to a public. We should talk
to Google and seek synergy, Commons is valuable when people are to use
legal material for illustration. They have to find it first.
The same goes for Wikisource, what is available for use to a public. How do
we leverage what we have and find all this hard work a public.
We do need research. We do need marketing research and we need a marketing
approach to getting the sum of the knowledge that we have to a public. I do
not want to argue the rights and wrongs of English Wikipedia. I trust them
to appreciate that they are part of the Wikimedia mission to get the public
well informed and provide our information with a neural point of view.
Never mind where this information is or in what language.
Thanks,
GerardM
[1]
On Sun, 15 Mar 2020 at 16:48, Peter Southwood <peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net>
wrote:
The question then is whether it is the community of
English Wikipedia
exerting this influence, or WMF failing to allocate resources fairly, and
if so, why? Is it just that the massive internet presence of English
Wikipedia exerts an irresistible gravitational attraction on the resources
like a black hole?
Cheers,
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On
Behalf Of Aron Demian
Sent: 15 March 2020 12:25
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Brand Project: Who are we as a movement?
My 2 cents: Imho the pressure from English Wikipedia on other projects of
the movement is very realistic in many kinds of matters, that I've
experienced myself too. Other projects are not independent socially or
culturally, the rules, practices, expectations and editorial behaviour is
strongly related to that on enwp with all its positive *and* negative
benefits. Often the negative benefits seem to outweigh the positive,
unfortunately.
Aron
On Sun, 15 Mar 2020 at 11:17, Peter Southwood <
peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net>
wrote:
It is grossly unrealistic to blame English
Wikipedia and its editing
community for what you appear to consider the shortcomings of other
Wikipedias.
En: does not require or pressurise other projects to comply with its
editorial standards, which are those developed by
en:WP, and for en:WP.
Other projects are free to set and use their own standards for content,
within the general WMF terms of use, and generally do. If they choose to
emulate en:WP that is their prerogative.
If you think that Cebuan Wikipedia does a better job of informing on the
subject matter it covers than other projects, and would like to convince
other projects that this is a realistic and rational opinion, and that
they
should follow that example, you are free to
produce documentary evidence
from experts that this is the case, and present it to the editing
communities of those projects for consideration.
If Commons are exceeding their remit by refusing to host material that is
not used on en:WP, that is not the policy or the fault of the en:WP
community who have no authority over Commons.
As a general rule, when discussing a topic where there is scope for
confusion, there is less likely for confusion to occur when you are
sufficiently specific when referring to the ambiguous entities.
Cheers,
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On
Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen
Sent: 15 March 2020 08:37
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Brand Project: Who are we as a movement?
Hoi,
By making the point that there is no Wikipedia AND that almost
universally
but particularly people who buy into English
Wikipedia consider Wikipedia
English Wikipedia, I expected that this is understood. I then address
English Wikipedia specifically because it is its conventions that prevent
the sum of all our knowledge to be shared.
Just to make that point specific, Cebuan Wikipedia does a better job
informing on the total of the subject matters it covers, it is a project
of
a father who wants his children to have access to
knowledge in their
maternal language. From a Wiki point of view he deserves praise and
gratitude in stead he gets scorn because it is against English Wikipedia
conventions. Furthermore the approach of using data to bring knowledge in
other languages is frustrated from within WMF. We could do a better
job, a
job that will work for any language but it is
actively discouraged. The
result is that we do NOT share in the sum of all knowledge, not even the
knowledge that is available to us. In other words, English Wikipedia
conventions prevent us from working towards our stated goal.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Sun, 15 Mar 2020 at 06:19, Peter Southwood <
peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net>
wrote:
> Gerard, You start off by correctly specifying that Wikipedia is about
300
> projects and make several good points about
how people confuse
Wikipedia
with
English Wikipedia, how this bias adversely affects various other
projects, and then claim that "Wikipedia" is "universally understood to
be
highly toxic". Are you referring to all 300
odd projects, or are you
using
> the generic term for the specific project in the way you previously
> objected to? Something else that is not obvious?
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen
> Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2020 2:12 PM
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Brand Project: Who are we as a movement?
>
> Hoi,
> Essie, the work done by Snøhetta centres on the notion of Wikipedia as
a
> unifying brand. The problem is that
Wikipedia on its own is 300
projects
and that
for many, if not most people English Wikipedia *is *Wikipedia.
When we are all to be Wikipedia we will all suffer from the bias that
English Wikipedia brings us. The problem with bias is that the negative
effects are not felt, considered by those people who self identify with
English Wikipedia.
* Research centres on English Wikipedia, when research is done for
projects
other than English Wikipedia, it is hard to get
research published
* New functionality is almost always written for the English Wikipedia,
the
notion of the "other languages" is
often not considered in the
architecture
* It is assumed that functionality works for
projects other than
Wikipedia,
specific functionality is hardly ever developed
* In OTRS, the notions of notability are hard coded for English
notability.
Consequently many pictures have been removed that
were explicitly
requested
for use with Wikidata
* there has been no marketing for other Wikimedia products - products.
Many
Wikisource books are available in final form. We
do not serve a purpose
because we do not seek an audience for them
* even though internationalisation and localisation for MediaWiki is
really
> good, we do not consider how we can make use of data in other
languages.
>
> It is universally understood that Wikipedia is highly toxic and it may
be
that for
external marketing Wikipedia makes sense. Internally I will
welcome a unified message only once English Wikipedia accepts that its
consensus is not considered as "Wikipedia" consensus.. Our aim is to
share
in the sum of all knowledge and it is not only in
English and it is not
what English Wikipedia deems notable.
Thanks,
GerardM
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