Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to disseminate free knowledge? Was: Profile of Magnus Manske

[Quim Gil]

First of all, I also think that we cannot expect us to fulfill our mission
by having all the world visiting our sites. A good percentage of that
mission probably needs to be fulfilled elsewhere thanks to our free
licenses and APIs.

On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 11:06 AM, Magnus Manske  wrote:

> We prefer people to read Wikipedia articles on Wikipedia, because a few of
> them will turn into editors, which they cannot do on any other site
> (without forking).


Even the idea of the remote contributors needs to be better explored. Our
APIs are not only GET, they are also POST. Editing the en.wiki article
about Cologne probably must happen in en.wiki itself, but there are many
types of contributions that allow for more flexibility and, in fact, might
be a lot more successful out of our Click-the-Edit-link paradigm.

https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-game/ (oh, Magnus Manske was here as
well)  ;) might be the prehistory of this trend. Binary decisions become
useful Wikimedia contributions without the need of instructions or (in some
cases) specialized knowledge. Binary decisions and other very simple
interactions are at the core of massively successful mobile and/or social
games that many of our friends and their kids play.

Meanwhile, people are uploading all kinds of media, crowdsourced
translations sentence by sentence are not exotic anymore and, in general,
crowd efforts are becoming part of mainstream Internet. Wikipedia actually
inspired this trend, showing that even a goal as complex as an encyclopedia
could be achieved by us, the people, in our free time, with a pool of small
personal investments.

Who will make the connection between Wikimedia's pool of free knowledge and
hundreds of possible non-Wikimedia projects that could contribute more free
knowledge to Wikimedia? Certainly not us average Wikimedians busy with our
watchlists and routines, and certainly not us here discussing with
ourselves in wikimedia-l while the World keeps spinning. Hopefully the
connections will be made by hundreds of creative minds scratching their own
itches and satisfying their own curiosities. But if we don't pitch them the
idea of plugging Wikimedia to their experiments and products, who will?



PS: all these discussions are very relevant for
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016_Strategy and I encourage you to
influence the WMF strategy by leaving there your answers and choices about
Reach, Community, and Knowledge. Going through the questionnaire took me
about 15 minutes and I found the exercise interesting.

-- 
Quim Gil
Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to disseminate free knowledge? Was: Profile of Magnus Manske

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
You do not offend but worse you do not convince because your arguments
fail. What we have always done is "share in the sum of all knowledge" and
to you that is wrong. You use gobbledygook like "techbubble" and your
vision is one of community. Fine. You do not define community in any other
way and leave me with a sense of "so?".

Wikipedia is our flagship. But Wikimedia is a fleet. With only a flagship
we are a one-trick-pony and we are about more than encyclopaedic trivia
about whatever there is to know about Elvis Presley. To me it is telling
that there is no article about William Anthony. You will find him now in
Wikidata and if you care to know why Mr Anthony is notable you may google
him.

Our fleet consists of types of vessels that each have their own purpose in
our plight to bring the sum of all knowledge to the world. When Wikipedia
is all we do, we do a miserable job. A miserable job because we do not even
share in the sum of knowledge available to us.

If reach is what our concern is, we should consider how to increase our
reach and place the ships in the most advantageous position in order to
provide more information so that people can gain the knowledge by
integrating what they know with what we offer.

So far we do a piss poor job at marketing our knowledge and it is because
we are not concerned with sharing in the sum of all knowledge, most of us
are only concerned with Wikipedia and that is a castle and the trade routes
are moving elsewhere.
Thanks,
   GerardM

On 18 January 2016 at 22:37, Jens Best  wrote:

> Hi Magnus,
>
> thanks for bringing yourself into the discussion.
>
> I agree on several aspects you point out in the first half of your mail
> about improvements, expectations and "prominent subgroups".
>
> When it comes to re-emphasize this "castle"-narrative, I had the feeling
> you wanna connect reasonable ideas of other ways into the future with all
> the nay-sayers you described so detailed before. Same goes for the
> "Wikidata is killing Wikipedia"-statement. Nobody in this
> mailinglist-thread used this word "killing" or similiarly hard analogies.
>
>
> So, what's again is the mission? You say: Dissemination of free knowledge.
> Well, who would disagree on that. Nobody. But wait, isn't the whole
> strategic debate about *HOW *to disseminate free knowledge? And assuming
> that a simple "the more third parties use the Wikiprojects knowledge the
> more we fulfill our mission"-answer is…wrong.
>
> Even if 400 million of the 500 million (or so) readers would visit the
> Wikipedia just to look up the birthday of Elvis Presley, it is *the
> *characteristic
> feature of an encylopedia in general and Wikipedia in special that you can
> discover more knowledge about Elvis even without asking or even knowing
> that you wanna know more about Elvis.
>
> Knowledge unequals information. Knowledge is information plus culture, plus
> personal interests, plus serendipity. That's why the same article has
> different arrangements in different languages. That's why it is not only
> about the facts, but also about the overview of the possible
> classifications around the facts a good article is presenting.
>
> Knowledge is about discovering and not about checking some facts with a
> Q app. So the question is surely not about should we disseminate
> free knowledge, but how can this be done with a spirit that comes from the
> idea of an encyclopedia. Information is in the machine. Knowledge is in the
> people. Without the (editing, programming, linking) people as an integral
> part of the "dissemination procedure" the mission isn't the mission of
> Wikipedia.
>
> This idea might be not that fashionably going together with the recent
> trends in web tech business developments, but it is surely not
> "conservative" or castle-wall-building as some people try to frame it.
> It is also not easy. It is even more complicate than good writing good
> code, because it is about involving more people in this not so trendy, not
> so quick'n'dirty, not so infotainmental, mobile app-stylish way of
> "knowledge dissemination".
>
> So the debate is not about castle-building, but about how we together
> re-shaping the ship called Wiki(pedia) to sail a daily demanding longterm
> mission and not following every techbubble-trends just because "more is
> better".
>
> I hope that the upcoming strategic debate is as open as it needs to be. A
> strategic debate which framework is already decided upon would only
> increase the distance created also by recent events.
>
> I hope this clarifies my POV, and doesn't offend too many people ;-)
>
> Best regards,
> Jens Best
>
>
>
> 2016-01-18 21:33 GMT+01:00 Magnus Manske :
>
> > OK, long thread, I'll try to answer in one here...
> >
> > * I've been writing code for over thirty years now, so I'm the first to
> say
> > that technology in not "the" answer to social or structural issues. It
> can,
> > however, mitigate some of 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to disseminate free knowledge? Was: Profile of Magnus Manske

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2016/01/wikidata-william-anthony-phd.html
Thanks,
 GerardM

On 19 January 2016 at 10:35, Peter Southwood 
wrote:

> Which William Anthony?
> There is an article on Wikipedia about one of them.
> P
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen
> Sent: Tuesday, 19 January 2016 10:39 AM
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to disseminate free knowledge? Was: Profile
> of Magnus Manske
>
> Hoi,
> You do not offend but worse you do not convince because your arguments
> fail. What we have always done is "share in the sum of all knowledge" and
> to you that is wrong. You use gobbledygook like "techbubble" and your
> vision is one of community. Fine. You do not define community in any other
> way and leave me with a sense of "so?".
>
> Wikipedia is our flagship. But Wikimedia is a fleet. With only a flagship
> we are a one-trick-pony and we are about more than encyclopaedic trivia
> about whatever there is to know about Elvis Presley. To me it is telling
> that there is no article about William Anthony. You will find him now in
> Wikidata and if you care to know why Mr Anthony is notable you may google
> him.
>
> Our fleet consists of types of vessels that each have their own purpose in
> our plight to bring the sum of all knowledge to the world. When Wikipedia
> is all we do, we do a miserable job. A miserable job because we do not even
> share in the sum of knowledge available to us.
>
> If reach is what our concern is, we should consider how to increase our
> reach and place the ships in the most advantageous position in order to
> provide more information so that people can gain the knowledge by
> integrating what they know with what we offer.
>
> So far we do a piss poor job at marketing our knowledge and it is because
> we are not concerned with sharing in the sum of all knowledge, most of us
> are only concerned with Wikipedia and that is a castle and the trade routes
> are moving elsewhere.
> Thanks,
>GerardM
>
> On 18 January 2016 at 22:37, Jens Best  wrote:
>
> > Hi Magnus,
> >
> > thanks for bringing yourself into the discussion.
> >
> > I agree on several aspects you point out in the first half of your
> > mail about improvements, expectations and "prominent subgroups".
> >
> > When it comes to re-emphasize this "castle"-narrative, I had the
> > feeling you wanna connect reasonable ideas of other ways into the
> > future with all the nay-sayers you described so detailed before. Same
> > goes for the "Wikidata is killing Wikipedia"-statement. Nobody in this
> > mailinglist-thread used this word "killing" or similiarly hard analogies.
> >
> >
> > So, what's again is the mission? You say: Dissemination of free
> knowledge.
> > Well, who would disagree on that. Nobody. But wait, isn't the whole
> > strategic debate about *HOW *to disseminate free knowledge? And
> > assuming that a simple "the more third parties use the Wikiprojects
> > knowledge the more we fulfill our mission"-answer is…wrong.
> >
> > Even if 400 million of the 500 million (or so) readers would visit the
> > Wikipedia just to look up the birthday of Elvis Presley, it is *the
> > *characteristic feature of an encylopedia in general and Wikipedia in
> > special that you can discover more knowledge about Elvis even without
> > asking or even knowing that you wanna know more about Elvis.
> >
> > Knowledge unequals information. Knowledge is information plus culture,
> > plus personal interests, plus serendipity. That's why the same article
> > has different arrangements in different languages. That's why it is
> > not only about the facts, but also about the overview of the possible
> > classifications around the facts a good article is presenting.
> >
> > Knowledge is about discovering and not about checking some facts with
> > a Q app. So the question is surely not about should we
> > disseminate free knowledge, but how can this be done with a spirit
> > that comes from the idea of an encyclopedia. Information is in the
> > machine. Knowledge is in the people. Without the (editing,
> > programming, linking) people as an integral part of the "dissemination
> > procedure" the mission isn't the mission of Wikipedia.
> >
> > This idea might be not that fashionably going together with the recent
> > trends in web tech business developments, but it is surely not
> > "conservative" or castle-wall-building as some people try to frame it.
> > It is also not easy. It is even more complicate than good writing good
> > code, because it is about involving more people in this not so trendy,
> > not so quick'n'dirty, not so infotainmental, mobile app-stylish way of
> > "knowledge dissemination".
> >
> > So the debate is not about castle-building, but about how we together
> > re-shaping the ship called Wiki(pedia) to sail a daily demanding
> > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to disseminate free knowledge? Was: Profile of Magnus Manske

[Peter Southwood]

Thanks,
I have no opinion on this one.
Cheers,
P

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Gerard Meijssen
Sent: Tuesday, 19 January 2016 12:49 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to disseminate free knowledge? Was: Profile of 
Magnus Manske

Hoi,
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2016/01/wikidata-william-anthony-phd.html
Thanks,
 GerardM

On 19 January 2016 at 10:35, Peter Southwood 
wrote:

> Which William Anthony?
> There is an article on Wikipedia about one of them.
> P
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On 
> Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen
> Sent: Tuesday, 19 January 2016 10:39 AM
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to disseminate free knowledge? Was: 
> Profile of Magnus Manske
>
> Hoi,
> You do not offend but worse you do not convince because your arguments 
> fail. What we have always done is "share in the sum of all knowledge" 
> and to you that is wrong. You use gobbledygook like "techbubble" and 
> your vision is one of community. Fine. You do not define community in 
> any other way and leave me with a sense of "so?".
>
> Wikipedia is our flagship. But Wikimedia is a fleet. With only a 
> flagship we are a one-trick-pony and we are about more than 
> encyclopaedic trivia about whatever there is to know about Elvis 
> Presley. To me it is telling that there is no article about William 
> Anthony. You will find him now in Wikidata and if you care to know why 
> Mr Anthony is notable you may google him.
>
> Our fleet consists of types of vessels that each have their own 
> purpose in our plight to bring the sum of all knowledge to the world. 
> When Wikipedia is all we do, we do a miserable job. A miserable job 
> because we do not even share in the sum of knowledge available to us.
>
> If reach is what our concern is, we should consider how to increase 
> our reach and place the ships in the most advantageous position in 
> order to provide more information so that people can gain the 
> knowledge by integrating what they know with what we offer.
>
> So far we do a piss poor job at marketing our knowledge and it is 
> because we are not concerned with sharing in the sum of all knowledge, 
> most of us are only concerned with Wikipedia and that is a castle and 
> the trade routes are moving elsewhere.
> Thanks,
>GerardM
>
> On 18 January 2016 at 22:37, Jens Best  wrote:
>
> > Hi Magnus,
> >
> > thanks for bringing yourself into the discussion.
> >
> > I agree on several aspects you point out in the first half of your 
> > mail about improvements, expectations and "prominent subgroups".
> >
> > When it comes to re-emphasize this "castle"-narrative, I had the 
> > feeling you wanna connect reasonable ideas of other ways into the 
> > future with all the nay-sayers you described so detailed before. 
> > Same goes for the "Wikidata is killing Wikipedia"-statement. Nobody 
> > in this mailinglist-thread used this word "killing" or similiarly hard 
> > analogies.
> >
> >
> > So, what's again is the mission? You say: Dissemination of free
> knowledge.
> > Well, who would disagree on that. Nobody. But wait, isn't the whole 
> > strategic debate about *HOW *to disseminate free knowledge? And 
> > assuming that a simple "the more third parties use the Wikiprojects 
> > knowledge the more we fulfill our mission"-answer is…wrong.
> >
> > Even if 400 million of the 500 million (or so) readers would visit 
> > the Wikipedia just to look up the birthday of Elvis Presley, it is 
> > *the *characteristic feature of an encylopedia in general and 
> > Wikipedia in special that you can discover more knowledge about 
> > Elvis even without asking or even knowing that you wanna know more about 
> > Elvis.
> >
> > Knowledge unequals information. Knowledge is information plus 
> > culture, plus personal interests, plus serendipity. That's why the 
> > same article has different arrangements in different languages. 
> > That's why it is not only about the facts, but also about the 
> > overview of the possible classifications around the facts a good article is 
> > presenting.
> >
> > Knowledge is about discovering and not about checking some facts 
> > with a Q app. So the question is surely not about should we 
> > disseminate free knowledge, but how can this be done with a spirit 
> > that comes from the idea of an encyclopedia. Information is in the 
> > machine. Knowledge is in the people. Without the (editing, 
> > programming, linking) people as an integral part of the 
> > "dissemination procedure" the mission isn't the mission of Wikipedia.
> >
> > This idea might be not that fashionably going together with the 
> > recent trends in web tech business developments, but it is surely 
> > not "conservative" or castle-wall-building as some people try to frame it.
> > It is also 

[Wikimedia-l] How to disseminate free knowledge? Was: Profile of Magnus Manske

[Jens Best]

Hi Magnus,

thanks for bringing yourself into the discussion.

I agree on several aspects you point out in the first half of your mail
about improvements, expectations and "prominent subgroups".

When it comes to re-emphasize this "castle"-narrative, I had the feeling
you wanna connect reasonable ideas of other ways into the future with all
the nay-sayers you described so detailed before. Same goes for the
"Wikidata is killing Wikipedia"-statement. Nobody in this
mailinglist-thread used this word "killing" or similiarly hard analogies.


So, what's again is the mission? You say: Dissemination of free knowledge.
Well, who would disagree on that. Nobody. But wait, isn't the whole
strategic debate about *HOW *to disseminate free knowledge? And assuming
that a simple "the more third parties use the Wikiprojects knowledge the
more we fulfill our mission"-answer is…wrong.

Even if 400 million of the 500 million (or so) readers would visit the
Wikipedia just to look up the birthday of Elvis Presley, it is *the
*characteristic
feature of an encylopedia in general and Wikipedia in special that you can
discover more knowledge about Elvis even without asking or even knowing
that you wanna know more about Elvis.

Knowledge unequals information. Knowledge is information plus culture, plus
personal interests, plus serendipity. That's why the same article has
different arrangements in different languages. That's why it is not only
about the facts, but also about the overview of the possible
classifications around the facts a good article is presenting.

Knowledge is about discovering and not about checking some facts with a
Q app. So the question is surely not about should we disseminate
free knowledge, but how can this be done with a spirit that comes from the
idea of an encyclopedia. Information is in the machine. Knowledge is in the
people. Without the (editing, programming, linking) people as an integral
part of the "dissemination procedure" the mission isn't the mission of
Wikipedia.

This idea might be not that fashionably going together with the recent
trends in web tech business developments, but it is surely not
"conservative" or castle-wall-building as some people try to frame it.
It is also not easy. It is even more complicate than good writing good
code, because it is about involving more people in this not so trendy, not
so quick'n'dirty, not so infotainmental, mobile app-stylish way of
"knowledge dissemination".

So the debate is not about castle-building, but about how we together
re-shaping the ship called Wiki(pedia) to sail a daily demanding longterm
mission and not following every techbubble-trends just because "more is
better".

I hope that the upcoming strategic debate is as open as it needs to be. A
strategic debate which framework is already decided upon would only
increase the distance created also by recent events.

I hope this clarifies my POV, and doesn't offend too many people ;-)

Best regards,
Jens Best



2016-01-18 21:33 GMT+01:00 Magnus Manske :

> OK, long thread, I'll try to answer in one here...
>
> * I've been writing code for over thirty years now, so I'm the first to say
> that technology in not "the" answer to social or structural issues. It can,
> however, mitigate some of those issues, or at least show new ways of
> dealing with them
>
> * New things are not necessarily good just because they are new. What seems
> to be an improvement, especially for a technical mind, can be a huge step
> backwards for the "general population". On the other hand, projects like
> the Visual Editor can make work easier for many people, but few of them
> will realize what a daunting undertaking such a project is. The complexity
> of getting this right is staggering. Expectations of getting it all
> perfect, all feature-complete, on the initial release, are unrealistic to
> say the least. And many of the details can not be tested between a few
> developers; things need to be tested under real-world conditions, and
> testing means they can break. Feedback about problems with a software
> release are actually quite welcome, but condemning an entire product
> forever because the first version didn't do everything 100% right is just
> plain stupid. If Wikipedia had been judged by such standards in 2001, there
> would be no Wikipedia today, period. Technology improves all the time, be
> it Visual Editor, Media Viewer, or Wikidata; but in the community, there is
> a sense of "it was bad, it must be still bad", and I have a feeling that
> this is extended to new projects by default these days.
>
> * In summary, what I criticize is that few people ask "how can we make this
> better"; all they ask is "how can we get rid of it". This attitude prevents
> the development of just about any new approach. If the result of a long,
> thorough analysis is "it's bad, and it can't possibly be made better",
> /then/ is the time to scrap it, but no sooner.
>
> * Of course, "the community" is