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 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
>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Oliver Keyes
> Research Analyst
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
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