Hi, thanks Andrew for bringing Magnus' words into the mailinglist-discussion. I would like to balance the direct critic made by Magnus with an attempt to differentiate the matter at hand a bit.
The obvious attempt to frame "the community" as conservative and not open to changes is a clever narrative, but it is wrong in its generalizing conclusion. The narrative which is trying to tell a story of a progressive, future-aware and tech-oriented Foundation and a "nothing has to change"-community is wrong, no matter how often it is told. There is not only one way to the future of Wikipedia, but many. There is not only one way to implement tech innovation into the Wikiprojects. But tech innovation should support the factual kernel of the movement idea - which is to build an encylopedia written for humans by humans. Not primarily for databases, not primarily for crawlers, no primarily for a "Knowledge Engine" (what ever that supposed to be in the end). Tech innovations which try to replace quality human editing are not a good idea. Tech innovations which try to reduce the encylopedia to a question/answer-machine are maybe fashionable and trendy, but do not fit to the idea of an encylopedia. They could be an addition, but not if they endanger the kernel. I was an outspoken supporter of the idea of Wikidata. But I now realize that this great idea is used to work against the human editors of the Wikipedia. This isn't the way Wikidata was sold to the public in the beginning. And it is surely not the way it is welcome in Wikipedia. The idea of connecting the informations in Wikipedia with other sources of free knowledge to give people the chance to build a variety of better tools based upon it is a great idea - the way it is done is not good. The idea of creating tech tools that relieve human editors from reiterating work and along the way implementing structured data into the workflows of Wikipedia (and other projects) is a great idea - the way it is done is not good and is pointing in a wrong direction. I'm a big fan of new users and while in many different circumstances introducing new people to Wikipedia I'm trying to think of procedures how this can be done in more efficient, inviting and understanding ways. I agree with Magnus when it comes to new users. More new users (specialists and generalists) are a critical and challenging endeavor. I don't agree with Magnus when it comes to "new technologies" which are in the medium term changing the encylopedia in a Q/A-machine. I believe in people, I don't believe in a Wiki-version of HAL 9000. Best regards, Jens Best 2016-01-18 14:34 GMT+01:00 Andrew Lih <andrew....@gmail.com>: > There’s an excellent profile of Magnus Manske in the Wikimedia blog today. > It’s hard to think of people more important to the movement than Magnus has > been since 2001. > > Selected quotes: "...we have gone from slowdown to standstill; the > interface has changed little in the last ten years or so, and all the > recent changes have been fought teeth-and-claw by the communities, > especially the larger language editions. From the Media Viewer, the Visual > Editor, to Wikidata transclusion, all have been resisted by vocal groups of > editors, not because they are a problem, but because they represent > change... all websites, including Wikipedia must obey the Red Queen > hypothesis: you have to run just to stand still. This does not only affect > Wikipedia itself, but the entire Wikimedia ecosystem... if we wall our > garden against change, against new users, new technologies our work of 15 > years is in danger of fading away... we are in an ideal position to try new > things. We have nothing to lose, except a little time.” > > Link: > > https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/18/fifteen-years-wikipedia-magnus-manske/ > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
