Hi all, Yaroslav has brought some very relevant points that unfortunately have not been discussed in great detail in the past but my conclusions differ a bit from those that he has drawn and the main source of the concerns he has identified. My thoughts are summarised in turn.
Firstly, Wikipedia do not seem to be endangered by the dramatic decrease in attention that people pay to written knowledge. Distribution of knowledge through new channels that emerged as a result of the technological evolution is becoming more popular but is simply insufficient for acquiring knowledge and creating a base for further learning assuming that people go beyond using it to check simple facts. For instance, nowadays you can take an online course on edX or Coursera to get knowledge of any scientific field but this is something that will never make you a good scientist; you can also play online chess and watch online videos and commentaries but this will not make you a strong chess player. Books (a form of written knowledge) are simply a must for advanced learning and this is something that is not going to easily change in near future, hence Wikipedia has its strength in place as a medium for converting the written knowledge from the books in a brief and more reader-friendly manner. My main concern, however, is that some topics are not covered in a simple way and require far advanced knowledge as a prerequisite for understanding (e.g. articles on topics in mathematics) and are poorly linked to the other relevant Wikimedia projects (e.g. Wikibooks) due to the lack of content. Simplifying the way these topics are covered would be, of course, be beneficial for many readers. Secondly, a major source of concern is the evolution of the Wikimedia Foundation from an NGO to a technology corporation that does not show any signs of addressing issues like this and how people in the developed world are being affected by it. I have full respect to some employees who have excellent understanding about the movement and the major upcoming challenges (mostly coming from the community) but there are simply too many outsiders who does not even know the basics of the movement and do not care at all to people in the movement who are not affiliated with them or are not hangers-on to their agenda. The problem is becoming even more serious with their strategic objective to focus on underrepresented communities primarily from the Global South through collaboration with the largest affiliates from the Global North and pretending that the unaffiliated active contributors from the developed countries do not exist. This whole thing has probably culminated with the Wikimedia 2030 strategy, where no-one knows what its final outcome should look like, but much effort was put to make a base on unreal assumptions and it will apparently get forced through (fantasty world). My main concern is that they might even start to force you away from the movement in the Thirdly, the reason why our long-standing contributors from the Global North make the unpopular decision to go away can be derived from my previous point. These people have very good understanding of how the movement was created, what the original purpose of the Wikimedia Foundation was supposed to be and how the recent developments contradict it. Some of them even go so far to say that they feel frustrated from the misuse of their volunteer efforts to build the largest encyclopedia in the world and now to see getting unheard, while some think that the Wikimedia Foundation has made a paradigm shift in the motivation to edit from contributing to the fastest-growing knowledge-based project in the late 2000s to getting hired by the Wikimedia Foundation to earn above-average income in the late 2010s (conclusion drawn from direct communication with people). Fortunately, this is still in a normal range but the unfavourable rate of change gives me the intuition that it might turn into an overkill. Lastly, the lack of focus on technology-related issues and the increasing need to adapt to the environmental changes is becoming increasingly difficult with no clear intent for major infrastructural shift. The community-based rather than technology-based strategic orientation, allbeit common sense, might become very costly if not properly ameliorated with some innovations. The problem with expanding an unchanged and obsolete infrastructure to underrepresented groups might result to no avail and further incentivise a major shift, thus doubling the cost invested in infrastructure. Definitely, it is an open topic to discuss whether outreach to new communities should be done using the old methods or experimenting with something new. I am sorry for the extensive text but there are things that need to be discussed. Best, Kiril On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 9:14 AM Peter Southwood < peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote: > Does the technology exist? Is it available? > How does this splitting make maintenance easier? > Cheers, > Peter > > -----Original Message----- > From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On > Behalf Of Jane Darnell > Sent: 30 December 2018 15:42 > To: Wikimedia Mailing List > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is the death of Wikipedia imminent? > > Well it is not difficult to imagine when you consider for example line > items in the case of list articles. Many lists could be split into such > line items and kept in a static assembled form by some sort of "assembly > template". Many of these line items are either articles or parts of > articles. Such "line items" may or may not have Wikidata items, may or may > not be suitable for Wikidata items, and may or may not be able to be > structured in any way, shape or form than the one they currently have. I > would like to be able to address these "line items" as "findable editing > snippets" in the wikiverse, possibly curatable by voice activation, > reversing the way we can sometimes get them read to us by Siri/Lexa. > > On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 1:48 PM Peter Southwood < > peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote: > > > Jane, > > I do not understand what parts you would split these things into, or how > > they would make Wikipedia easier to curate and edit. Could you link to an > > explanation or clarify the concept? > > Cheers, > > Peter > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > 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> > > --- > This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. > https://www.avg.com > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > 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 and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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>
