Re: [Wiki-research-l] Research discussion: Visions for Wikipedia
This thread just made me realize that it hasn't been implemented yet and that what I have been using is yet another Magnus gadget, which, btw, I can highly recommend! When I search in Wikipedia, I see a subsection at the bottom which begins with Wikidata search results. It's great and I use it all the time to find images, articles, and other links On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 12:15 AM, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: If it's that trivial to implement, implement it. That's a very compressed way of saying; I think it's fine for us to disagree on this list. But, really? Pine's email made you despair? It, by inference, made you conclude he doesn't accept new things? You find the absence of a feature actively irrational? It's okay for Pine's vision to be different from yours, or mine, or Aaron's, or anyone else's. Wikimedia's ethos is not built on any one person's vision: it is built on the sum of all of our hopes (in an ideal universe). It's not a one-in, one-out system where ideas must be harshly and actively countered so that yours can take primacy. So let's try and stay non-hyperbolic and civil on this list, please. As a heuristic; if even /you/ feel a need to write an apology for your email into an email, don't hit send. On 27 October 2014 17:14, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, I read your mail again. It makes me despair. Wikimedia research is NOT about Wikipedia, not exclusively. When I read what is an inspiration to you I find all the reasons why Wikipedians do not accept anything new. Why we still do not have a search that also returns information on what is NOT in that particular Wikipedia. It is only one example out of many. It is however so easy to implement, it defies logic that it has not happened on all Wikipedias. It is just one example that demonstrates that we do not even share the sum of all information that is available to us. ... Sorry, GerardM On 20 October 2014 08:23, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Both of the presentations at the October Wikimedia Research Showcase were fascinating and I encourage everyone to watch them [1]. I would like to continue to discuss the themes from the showcase about Wikipedia's adaptability, viability, and diversity. Aaron's discussion about Wikipedia's ongoing internal adaptations, and the slowing of those adaptations, reminded me of this statement from MIT Technology Review in 2013 (and I recommend reading the whole article [2]): The main source of those problems (with Wikipedia) is not mysterious. The loose collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers who might increase partipcipation in Wikipedia and broaden its coverage. I would like to contrast that vision of Wikipedia with the vision presented by User:CatherineMunro (formatting tweaks by me), which I re-read when I need encouragement: THIS IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future, The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us, The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands, And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know. How can we align ouselves less with the former vision and more with the latter? [3] I hope that we can continue to discuss these themes on the Research mailing list. Please contribute your thoughts and questions there. Regards, Pine [1] youtube.com/watch?v=-We4GZbH3Iw [2] http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/ [3] Lest this at first seem to be impossible, I will borrow and tweak a quote from from George Bernard Shaw and later used by John F. Kennedy: Some people see things as they are and say, 'Why?' Let us dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?' ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l -- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Research discussion: Visions for Wikipedia
Hoi, I agree when it is the only thing I said. Yes, I asked you personally and Toby ... and Erik (both of them and several times) and I always hear good idea, should be easy, we ill look into it and we get back to you. But as I said, your reply is relevant when it is the only thing I said and it is not. Thanks, GerardM On 28 October 2014 13:43, Aaron Halfaker aaron.halfa...@gmail.com wrote: Gerard. Did you file the feature request? If not, you are ranting at the wrong mailing list. On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 3:20 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, Despair is a personal emotion. What makes you think that despair is an attack on a person? It is not. Oliver, I despair about what the Research list has become and, I will explain why. What I despair about is the overwhelming amount of Wikipedia related noise. Noise because it feels to me like the same subjects are covered in endless similar ways. I despair because when something new happens OUTSIDE of this, the English Wikipedia it is completely ignored. Much of what I hear feels like noise because it lacks practical relevance. Research, statistics could show What are people looking for most in Wikipedia but cannot find. We do not have that because of no reason I can think of and, it has been promised often enough for years now. The Swedish Wikipedia finds that their bot generated articles has rejuvenated their Wikipedia but the research community is quiet about it.. Ignores it ? Wikidata has statistics [1] its data has a real meaning about Wikipedia, about Wikidata and about the sum of all information AVAILABLE to us. The consequence of all this self promotion is that there is no attention for anything else.. Yes, we know there is a gender disparity but what about people with a mental health problem.. We have way more people editing who are enriched with a diagnosis than is average. What do our projects mean for them, does it help them with their self awareness, does it help them recover, is our community aware of it and how does it cope or fail to cope. What practical steps can we take to make these valuable contributors more secure, less anxious? Researching the same things over and over does not help us understand WIkipedia, our other projects, our communities. It does not help us achieve our aim; it is share in the sum of all knowledge, we do not even share all the knowledge that is available to us. Why not? How can we do this? Jane knows the tool that provides a selection of Wikipedias with search results from Wikidata. It works, Ori looked at it from a performance point of view. NOTHING NEEDS TO BE DONE TO IMPLEMENT IT. It does not happen. A research question would be Why. The statistics for Wikidata are not up to date because the dumps are faulty. It is not clear, obvious that it is of real concern to the people responisble. However this data IS used to run specific bots based on what the numbers show. The numbers matter, the statistics matter they have a real demonstrable impact. What I am looking for is relevance and I find only research for more fine grained explanations not for solutions. It is why I despair, it is because it feels so much like a colossal waste of time when you consider that researching subjects with a different objective would help us forward so much. Maybe my expectations are unrealistic and people doing research are just another incrowd doing their own thing. Thanks, GerardM [1] https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/stats.php?reverse On 28 October 2014 00:15, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: If it's that trivial to implement, implement it. That's a very compressed way of saying; I think it's fine for us to disagree on this list. But, really? Pine's email made you despair? It, by inference, made you conclude he doesn't accept new things? You find the absence of a feature actively irrational? It's okay for Pine's vision to be different from yours, or mine, or Aaron's, or anyone else's. Wikimedia's ethos is not built on any one person's vision: it is built on the sum of all of our hopes (in an ideal universe). It's not a one-in, one-out system where ideas must be harshly and actively countered so that yours can take primacy. So let's try and stay non-hyperbolic and civil on this list, please. As a heuristic; if even /you/ feel a need to write an apology for your email into an email, don't hit send. On 27 October 2014 17:14, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, I read your mail again. It makes me despair. Wikimedia research is NOT about Wikipedia, not exclusively. When I read what is an inspiration to you I find all the reasons why Wikipedians do not accept anything new. Why we still do not have a search that also returns information on what is NOT in that particular Wikipedia. It is only one example out of many. It is however so easy to implement, it defies logic that it
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Research discussion: Visions for Wikipedia
(broke Gerard's discussion into a separate thread. See https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wiki-research-l/2014-October/003900.html ) Kerry's conceptualization of a legitimizing ideology is interesting. It doesn't seem like the ideology itself is a problem though. Quality control is important. However I think the criticism is still well met since ideologies -- even good ones -- have the potential to legitimize bad behavior. One strategy to make some change here would be to find a way to measure the amount of lost quality/productivity caused by aggressive application of rules and a lack of consideration for newcomers. Kerry put forward an idea for a research project exploring trends in editor interactions[1] that I think has the potential for insights in this area. I'm working with Pine to gather datasets that would make analysis of interactions easier to perform[2]. 1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Ideas/Editor_profiles_and_interactions 2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Editor_Interaction_Data_Extraction_and_Visualization On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 8:01 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, I agree when it is the only thing I said. Yes, I asked you personally and Toby ... and Erik (both of them and several times) and I always hear good idea, should be easy, we ill look into it and we get back to you. But as I said, your reply is relevant when it is the only thing I said and it is not. Thanks, GerardM On 28 October 2014 13:43, Aaron Halfaker aaron.halfa...@gmail.com wrote: Gerard. Did you file the feature request? If not, you are ranting at the wrong mailing list. On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 3:20 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, Despair is a personal emotion. What makes you think that despair is an attack on a person? It is not. Oliver, I despair about what the Research list has become and, I will explain why. What I despair about is the overwhelming amount of Wikipedia related noise. Noise because it feels to me like the same subjects are covered in endless similar ways. I despair because when something new happens OUTSIDE of this, the English Wikipedia it is completely ignored. Much of what I hear feels like noise because it lacks practical relevance. Research, statistics could show What are people looking for most in Wikipedia but cannot find. We do not have that because of no reason I can think of and, it has been promised often enough for years now. The Swedish Wikipedia finds that their bot generated articles has rejuvenated their Wikipedia but the research community is quiet about it.. Ignores it ? Wikidata has statistics [1] its data has a real meaning about Wikipedia, about Wikidata and about the sum of all information AVAILABLE to us. The consequence of all this self promotion is that there is no attention for anything else.. Yes, we know there is a gender disparity but what about people with a mental health problem.. We have way more people editing who are enriched with a diagnosis than is average. What do our projects mean for them, does it help them with their self awareness, does it help them recover, is our community aware of it and how does it cope or fail to cope. What practical steps can we take to make these valuable contributors more secure, less anxious? Researching the same things over and over does not help us understand WIkipedia, our other projects, our communities. It does not help us achieve our aim; it is share in the sum of all knowledge, we do not even share all the knowledge that is available to us. Why not? How can we do this? Jane knows the tool that provides a selection of Wikipedias with search results from Wikidata. It works, Ori looked at it from a performance point of view. NOTHING NEEDS TO BE DONE TO IMPLEMENT IT. It does not happen. A research question would be Why. The statistics for Wikidata are not up to date because the dumps are faulty. It is not clear, obvious that it is of real concern to the people responisble. However this data IS used to run specific bots based on what the numbers show. The numbers matter, the statistics matter they have a real demonstrable impact. What I am looking for is relevance and I find only research for more fine grained explanations not for solutions. It is why I despair, it is because it feels so much like a colossal waste of time when you consider that researching subjects with a different objective would help us forward so much. Maybe my expectations are unrealistic and people doing research are just another incrowd doing their own thing. Thanks, GerardM [1] https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/stats.php?reverse On 28 October 2014 00:15, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: If it's that trivial to implement, implement it. That's a very compressed way of saying; I think it's fine for us to disagree on this list. But, really? Pine's email made you
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Research discussion: Visions for Wikipedia
On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 9:09 AM, Aaron Halfaker ahalfa...@wikimedia.org wrote: When that kind of roadblock gets put in the path of innovation, we're already ossified. That's an interesting opinion. It seems that you are suggesting that the problem is not recoverable. How do you know that is true? The CC license gives us the assurance that the problem is recoverable. The question is WMF's role the recovery. HHVM is promising evidence that the WMF is open to technical innovation within a single layer of the infrastructure, but note that that has been driven from within the WMF, resourced by the WMF and I believe peopled by the WMF. What is needed is a framework (technical and organisational) that allows for similar innovation to be done by non-WMF people in areas that the WMF agrees with in principal but considers not a resourced priority. I certainly see no evidence of that. cheers stuart ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Research discussion: Visions for Wikipedia
Hey Pine, Thanks for prod'ing the conversation. See also the discussion about Wikipedia's decreasing adaptability on the Wikimedia analytics mailing list here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2014-October/002651.html IMO, the critical piece of evidence that English Wikipedia is suffering from a lack of adaptive flexibility is the lack of any substantial change to the treatment of newcomers since the massive decline in retention of good-faith newcomers started in 2007[2]. A secondary piece of evidence is the increasing resistance to policy/guideline (formalized norm) changes for all editors, but especially newcomers[3]. We've seen some follow-up work that suggests that Wikipedia's complexity itself is a barrier for new editors[7] and that these issues extend to spaces specifically designed to support newcomers' work[6]. There have been some interesting efforts to address the symptoms of the problem. For example, see WP:Teahouse[4], WP:Snuggle[5] and Onboarding Research[8]. Personally, I think that the way forward is to recognize that *hard problems are hard* because others have tried the easy/intuitive solutions already. I think it is time to dig in and understand the fundamental, socio-technical nature of Wikipedia. To that end, I'm working on building data resources of strategic importance (see [9, 10, 11, 12]). I'm also working towards experimenting with the effects of increased reflexive power by surfacing a value-added measurement service[13]. And of course, I'm advertising our socio-technical problems at research showcase like the one Pine linked and when giving talks (e.g. [14]) so that we can grow our army of wiki researchers. OMG WALL OF REFERENCES: 1. Halfaker, A., Geiger, R. S., Morgan, J. T., Riedl, J. (2012). The rise and decline of an open collaboration system: How Wikipedia’s reaction to popularity is causing its decline. *American Behavioral Scientist*, 0002764212469365. http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/halfaker13rise-preprint.pdf 2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Desirable_newcomer_survival_over_time.png from [1] Figure 4, pg. 12 3. Page 17, table 2 and the two pgs preceeding it. http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/halfaker13rise-preprint.pdf 4. Morgan, J. T., Bouterse, S., Walls, H., Stierch, S. (2013, February). Tea and sympathy: crafting positive new user experiences on wikipedia. In *Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work* (pp. 839-848). ACM. http://jtmorgan.net/jtmorgan/files/morgan_cscw2013_final.pdf 5. Halfaker, A., Geiger, R. S., Terveen, L. G. (2014, April). Snuggle: designing for efficient socialization and ideological critique. In *Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems* (pp. 311-320). ACM. http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/Snuggle/halfaker14snuggle-preprint.pdf 6. Schneider, J., Gelley, B. S., Halfaker, A. (2014, August). Accept, decline, postpone: How newcomer productivity is reduced in English Wikipedia by pre-publication review. In *Proceedings of The International Symposium on Open Collaboration* (p. 26). ACM. http://cse.poly.edu/~gelley/acceptdecline.pdf 7. Ford, H., Geiger, R. S. (2012, August). Writing up rather than writing down: Becoming wikipedia literate. In *Proceedings of the Eighth Annual International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration* (p. 16). ACM. http://www.opensym.org/ws2012/p21wikisym2012.pdf 8. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Onboarding_new_Wikipedians 9. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Ideas/MediaWiki_events:_a_generalized_public_event_datasource 10. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Editor_Interaction_Data_Extraction_and_Visualization 11. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Automated_Notability_Detection 12. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Revision_scoring_as_a_service 13. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:WikiCredit 14. https://www.si.umich.edu/events/201409/icos-lecture-aaron-halfaker -Aaron On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 1:23 AM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Both of the presentations at the October Wikimedia Research Showcase were fascinating and I encourage everyone to watch them [1]. I would like to continue to discuss the themes from the showcase about Wikipedia's adaptability, viability, and diversity. Aaron's discussion about Wikipedia's ongoing internal adaptations, and the slowing of those adaptations, reminded me of this statement from MIT Technology Review in 2013 (and I recommend reading the whole article [2]): The main source of those problems (with Wikipedia) is not mysterious. The loose collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers who might increase partipcipation in Wikipedia and broaden its coverage. I would like to contrast that vision of Wikipedia
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Research discussion: Visions for Wikipedia
Hoi, I read your mail again. It makes me despair. Wikimedia research is NOT about Wikipedia, not exclusively. When I read what is an inspiration to you I find all the reasons why Wikipedians do not accept anything new. Why we still do not have a search that also returns information on what is NOT in that particular Wikipedia. It is only one example out of many. It is however so easy to implement, it defies logic that it has not happened on all Wikipedias. It is just one example that demonstrates that we do not even share the sum of all information that is available to us. ... Sorry, GerardM On 20 October 2014 08:23, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Both of the presentations at the October Wikimedia Research Showcase were fascinating and I encourage everyone to watch them [1]. I would like to continue to discuss the themes from the showcase about Wikipedia's adaptability, viability, and diversity. Aaron's discussion about Wikipedia's ongoing internal adaptations, and the slowing of those adaptations, reminded me of this statement from MIT Technology Review in 2013 (and I recommend reading the whole article [2]): The main source of those problems (with Wikipedia) is not mysterious. The loose collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers who might increase partipcipation in Wikipedia and broaden its coverage. I would like to contrast that vision of Wikipedia with the vision presented by User:CatherineMunro (formatting tweaks by me), which I re-read when I need encouragement: THIS IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future, The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us, The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands, And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know. How can we align ouselves less with the former vision and more with the latter? [3] I hope that we can continue to discuss these themes on the Research mailing list. Please contribute your thoughts and questions there. Regards, Pine [1] youtube.com/watch?v=-We4GZbH3Iw [2] http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/ [3] Lest this at first seem to be impossible, I will borrow and tweak a quote from from George Bernard Shaw and later used by John F. Kennedy: Some people see things as they are and say, 'Why?' Let us dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?' ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Research discussion: Visions for Wikipedia
I am currently on vacation and will not be able to answer your mail before November 10. But I will get back then as soon as possible. Best regards, Aileen Oeberst ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Research discussion: Visions for Wikipedia
Sometimes I find the history of gcc ([[GNU Compiler Collection]]) enlightening. gcc was one of the first pieces of open source software to be embedded ubiquitously, globally, in lots of very important things. By 1997 it's development had ossified and those pushing for new features forked the code to take it in new directions. Within two years the vigorous development in the fork had led to it being the blessed official version. cheers stuart On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 12:15 PM, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: If it's that trivial to implement, implement it. That's a very compressed way of saying; I think it's fine for us to disagree on this list. But, really? Pine's email made you despair? It, by inference, made you conclude he doesn't accept new things? You find the absence of a feature actively irrational? It's okay for Pine's vision to be different from yours, or mine, or Aaron's, or anyone else's. Wikimedia's ethos is not built on any one person's vision: it is built on the sum of all of our hopes (in an ideal universe). It's not a one-in, one-out system where ideas must be harshly and actively countered so that yours can take primacy. So let's try and stay non-hyperbolic and civil on this list, please. As a heuristic; if even /you/ feel a need to write an apology for your email into an email, don't hit send. On 27 October 2014 17:14, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, I read your mail again. It makes me despair. Wikimedia research is NOT about Wikipedia, not exclusively. When I read what is an inspiration to you I find all the reasons why Wikipedians do not accept anything new. Why we still do not have a search that also returns information on what is NOT in that particular Wikipedia. It is only one example out of many. It is however so easy to implement, it defies logic that it has not happened on all Wikipedias. It is just one example that demonstrates that we do not even share the sum of all information that is available to us. ... Sorry, GerardM On 20 October 2014 08:23, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Both of the presentations at the October Wikimedia Research Showcase were fascinating and I encourage everyone to watch them [1]. I would like to continue to discuss the themes from the showcase about Wikipedia's adaptability, viability, and diversity. Aaron's discussion about Wikipedia's ongoing internal adaptations, and the slowing of those adaptations, reminded me of this statement from MIT Technology Review in 2013 (and I recommend reading the whole article [2]): The main source of those problems (with Wikipedia) is not mysterious. The loose collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers who might increase partipcipation in Wikipedia and broaden its coverage. I would like to contrast that vision of Wikipedia with the vision presented by User:CatherineMunro (formatting tweaks by me), which I re-read when I need encouragement: THIS IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future, The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us, The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands, And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know. How can we align ouselves less with the former vision and more with the latter? [3] I hope that we can continue to discuss these themes on the Research mailing list. Please contribute your thoughts and questions there. Regards, Pine [1] youtube.com/watch?v=-We4GZbH3Iw [2] http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/ [3] Lest this at first seem to be impossible, I will borrow and tweak a quote from from George Bernard Shaw and later used by John F. Kennedy: Some people see things as they are and say, 'Why?' Let us dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?' ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l -- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Research discussion: Visions for Wikipedia
Aileen makes a good point. But seriously though, I'm confused about what just happened. I think there are two interesting ideas being proposed here. One the examination of a theoretical argument -- that English Wikipedia is a type of system that requires *adaptive capacity* in order to survive and that a decline in its *adaptive capacity* has caused measurable declines in fitness metrics. This came paired with a call to action -- to ask why not? The other is an insightful feature request to include results from related wikis when using Special:Search. Given the availability of the search API[1], the worst technical hurdles seem to have been circumvented. If a reasonable justification can be given[2], the search team might pick it up. Patch sets, of course, would be fastest. 1. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Search 2. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensionscomponent=CirrusSearch -Aaron On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 6:16 PM, Aileen Oeberst a.oebe...@iwm-kmrc.de wrote: I am currently on vacation and will not be able to answer your mail before November 10. But I will get back then as soon as possible. Best regards, Aileen Oeberst ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Research discussion: Visions for Wikipedia
I'm 100% with you both on this matter of having tried the obvious easy solutions. If I hear one more person to propose outreach as the solution to the gender gap or new editor retention, I think I will insert threat of choice here. I do a lot of outreach here in Australia and, yes, hand-holding works as long as you in the room with them but stops working once they are at the mercy of the community (who will attack even during the outreach). And also that kind of handholding is not scalable. We don't just need 10 new active editors; we need 10K or even 100K new active editors. It is indeed time to tackle the hard problem and that is changing the crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere. The solution does not lie in training people to conform to that regime. Even if people are taught how to engage with it, if people don't enjoy the experience, of course they will walk away. Those of us still here are all probably as stubborn as mules and with the hides of rhinoceroses (or just enjoy being a bully safely hidden behind a pseudonym). Although academic standards of publication appears to held up as the ideal behind some of the Wikipedia quality guidelines, I must say they are higher standards than I've seen enforced at most journals or in most conferences. And certainly I've never seen the rigid enforcement of the nit-picking rules in the Manual of Style. I do think we are operating our own version of the Stanford Prison Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment only the difference is that they cancelled their experiment in about a week. Ours has been running for years .. The Wikipedia article above says . The results of the experiment have been argued to demonstrate the impressionability and obedience of people when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social and institutional support. Quality control is Wikipedia's legitimising ideology and our processes provide it with the social and institutional support. When did you ever see someone in an Article for Deletion discussion or similar say let's look at the big picture here, the WMF have a strategic priority to reverse editor attrition or close the gender gap, let's consider our decision here with that in mind. No, it's always we must decide this according to our rules, raising any other point is discouraged (you get slapped down for it). Of course, I question why WMF allows the community to make and enforce rules when the outcome appears to be working against their stated priorities. That's not strong governance, that's weakness. I don't think WMF needs to control everything top-down (and indeed it would not be scalable if they did) but they do need to set boundaries in some places in relation to the community's control over policy and process to ensure the success of the WMF strategic plan. For example, I would say that if a new editor creates a new article which isn't obviously spam/vandalism, does it really matter to let that article survive because it isn't notable enough according to the guidelines for that category of article. At the very least could we defer the discussion of deletion for a few months in the hope it is further developed to a better standard by then? Perhaps a two stage process, first communicate with the contributor(s) with *precise* concerns about how it needs to be improved and they have a month to do it, and that help is available (at the TeaHouse or wherever). (Feedback is often too vague, saying not notable is not helpful and saying WP:ANYTHING is not helpful either as it looks like a string of gibberish written like that and even if the link is clicked, the resulting page is full of jargon and often meaningless to the newbie). Maybe we should introduce a karma system (like Slashdot). You can only do certain actions if you have high karma. So positive emotional actions like thanking, wikilove, writing nice sentiment messages, making uncontested contributions to articles, etc earn you karma and only high karma people can take negative emotional actions (undoing - other than vandalism), proposing for deletion, voting to delete, because they reduce your karma etc. This might at least slow down the out-and-out bullies who engage in lots of emotionally negative behaviours . Kerry _ From: wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Aaron Halfaker Sent: Tuesday, 21 October 2014 12:08 AM To: Pine W Cc: wikie...@lists.wikimedia.org; Editor Engagement; Rachel diCerbo; Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase theparticipation of women within Wikimedia projects.; Wiki Research-l; A mailing list for the Analytics Team at WMF and everybody who has aninterest in Wikipedia and analytics. Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Research discussion: Visions for Wikipedia Hey Pine, Thanks for prod'ing the conversation. See also the discussion about Wikipedia's decreasing
