Hi Gerard, On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 12:13 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hoi, > I have read your comments on the WIki Indaba. Sad to hear that you could > not make it. > > As a movement it is not our task to serve the "2000" languages that you > mention. It is our task to serve the languages that we support in our > existing Wikipedias.
This is not obvious to me if I read the strategic direction [1]. Specifically under Knowledge Equity we say: "We will welcome people from every background to build strong and diverse communities. We will break down the social, political, and technical barriers preventing people from accessing and contributing to free knowledge." Depending on how we want to operationalize "welcome" in the above sentence, we may not want to focus on Wikipedia as the only project which will be the path of entry for language communities. Even if it's clear that we have to focus on Wikipedia, it is not clear to me that we should focus our support only on the languages that already have a Wikipedia. What if there are languages in which Wikipedia can be present and due to the limitations of the specific community around that language they have not been able to pull off their language Wikipedia? Of course, I understand the tension. There is argument to be made that when it comes to Wikipedia, our best bet is to focus on the languages that are already in. That's why I called out that we will be challenged with the trade-offs. > Where you talk about subjects that people are likely to read, there are > many predictive models possible. The big issue in current approaches is > that they start with what we know from projects particularly the English > Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia is biased and consequently many subjects > that may be of a higher relevance in other languages or cultures will not > be suggested when English Wikipedia and its traffic is the yard stone to > measure by. The ranking model in section 2.2. of https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.03235.pdf addresses this issue to a good extent. There is no emphasis on one Wikipedia in that model. Please check the list of features. We still can do better and improve that model to not be based on the pageviews in the destination language, as I mentioned in the report, we've had some conversations about picking up that direction, but the reality is that we have a working model that can predict pageviews in the destination language based on more universal features than just what is happening in English Wikipedia. We should use that model when relevant! :) > Anyway, thank you for reporting on your virtual presence; you made a > difference in this way. anytime! :) Best, Leila [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction#Our_strategic_direction:_Service_and_Equity > Thanks, > GerardM > > > On 23 March 2018 at 00:41, Leila Zia <le...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > > > Hi all, > > > > Here is the report of the one session I attended in Wiki Indaba over the > > past weekend: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LZia_(WMF)/Trip_ > > reports#Wiki_Indaba_2018 > > > > Best, > > Leila > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
