On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 6:31 AM, Yao Ziyuan <yaoziy...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 6:13 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dal...@gmail.com> > wrote: >> There is already a discussion page attached to every article. It's for >> discussing the article, though, rather than its topic. > > Besides this, another disadvantage of the current "Talk" tab is it > uses the wiki way to talk, not the typical "comment section" we see > under every YouTube video, Flickr image, Facebook status update, etc. > The wiki way to talk may be favored by the Wikipedia community, but is > really weird to the general public. > >> >> While we are more than a conventional encyclopedia, we are still an >> encyclopaedia and I don't think we should add job and product adverts to >> our articles. >> >> If people want to make friends, they can go to Facebook. If people want to >> find or contribute encyclopedic information (and, perhaps, make some >> friends along the way as an added bonus) then they should come to us. > > The unique merit of using Wikipedia as a discussion place is its > uniqueness. There are many "cat forums" on the Web, but they're > scattered all over the Web; in contrast, the Wikipedia article [[Cat]] > is a unique and prominent place for the topic "cat". If people want to > go to a centralized, unified place to talk about cats, they should > come to [[Cat]].
This merit is even more evident when the topic is very specialized, e.g. [[Phonological history of English low back vowels]]. I bet there isn't a forum on the Web dedicated to this very specialized topic, and even if there is one, it can be very hard to find it with Google (because it may use a slightly different term to describe this topic). However, if every Wikipedia article has a corresponding comment section (actually a forum), people with this special interest ("phonological history of English low back vowels") will know where to go to find each other, forming a "special interest group" (SIG). > >> On Jan 22, 2012 9:43 PM, "Yao Ziyuan" <yaoziy...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Hello All, >>> >>> I just filed a feature request which I think is of strategic interest >>> to Wikipedia: >>> >>> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33889 >>> >>> Bug 33889 - Request to add a comment section under every Wikipedia article >>> >>> By providing a comment section under every Wikipedia article, we can enable >>> people interested in that topic to talk with each other, make friends and >>> exchange external resources pertaining to that topic (e.g. books, products, >>> jobs, external references, etc.). >>> >>> Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia; it is also a very valuable "topic >>> navigation and positioning service" that navigates you to any conceivable >>> topic >>> in your mind, and once you're at that topic's Wikipedia article, the >>> article's >>> URL becomes a unique address that "positions" that topic. With this >>> position, >>> we can do many useful things (such as the ones mentioned in the previous >>> paragraph), just like we can do many useful things with a geographic >>> information system (GIS) such as Google Earth. >>> >>> There are many MediaWiki extensions that can add a comment section to every >>> Wikipedia article. Just go to >>> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_Matrix/AllExtensions and search >>> for >>> "comment" or "discussion". >>> >>> Best Regards, >>> Ziyuan Yao >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> foundation-l mailing list >>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l