Responses below: On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 5:07 PM Strainu <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I would argue that, on the contrary, for the outside word we were less > Wikipedia 10 years ago. Around that time there was still hope that > Wikibooks or Wikinews could still be successful, at least in some > languages. New language versions of other projects than Wikipedia were > created relatively regularly and many people who started with > Wikipedia moved on to maintain and develop other projects. Today the > Foundation has all but given up on all other projects except the 3 you > mention below (and, to some extent, Wikisource), Google is taking data > from Wikipedia (but prefers other dictionaries instead of Wikt) and > people barely hide a polite yawn when you talk about the other > projects. > For the record, I was one of the earliest skeptics of Wikinews and was one of the first accredited Wikinewsies in 2005. I believed the best way to critically understand its flaws was to actually immerse myself in it. I quickly saw it was not viable, and memorialized my thoughts about it for Harvard Nieman Lab (below). I say this not to brag, but simply to say that the "hope" of that era may be overhyped. :) https://www.niemanlab.org/2010/02/why-wikipedia-beats-wikinews-as-a-collaborative-journalism-project/ > > - We stand on three legs (and more): If there was ever a time that > > Wikimedia was more than Wikipedia, it is now. The trio of Wikipedia, > > Commons and Wikidata is the bedrock of open knowledge sharing in a way > that > > was not true even 3 years ago. > > While that is true, the monolingual nature of the last 2 has left all > but the most determined outside this revolution. While not directly > relevant for the branding issue, it partially explains why people know > about Wikipedia more: it's in their language! > Wait, I'm confused. Are you saying Wikidata is a "monolingual" project? As a semantic database, it's perhaps the most multilingual-friendly project we have. I've collaborated with Portuguese and French GLAM projects on Wikidata because of how good it is at providing an interface for a shared data set using the user's native tongue. So I'm eager to hear more about why you believe Wikidata is in the "monolingual" bin. > Specialization has clear advantages, but again, is not helping with > branding towards the general public and that is our target, not GLAM > or photographers. > This is a valid critique, though I'm not sure we've ever put the full force of Foundation resources behind providing public awareness for Commons. It's mostly been through community-level efforts and SiteNotice banners, to my knowledge, for WLM, Commons POTY, Wiki Loves Africa, etc. Not sure what the point is here. System biases are also obvious in > Commons (copyright law) and Wikidata (very specific knowledge is > required to understand how data is organized). > I think the point is: add the systemic bias of needing to know how to read to the stack of the biases you also list here. There are a multitude of challenges, and I think you absolutely win with "understanding copyright" as the biggest user challenge we have. :) > This war is specific to English Wikipedia and a few other wikis > (admittedly, rather larger ones). Smaller communities have already > largely embraced Wikidata in infoboxes and elsewhere. This has not > changed how they represent themselves and I believe that the same > holds true for the renaming. > Oh yes, there are many folks highly envious of Basque and Catalan Wikipedia where Wikidata integration is used effectively on a large scale. > Also, I believe it is mistaken to think of the branding proposal as a > single, monolithic, yes-or-no proposal. It is rather a series of > proposals, some easier and some more complicated to implement. Each > should be analyzed independently for its own merits. > Agree. We won't know until/if it happens. I simply wanted to make sure a broad set of concerns were being incorporated into the risk assessment. Thanks -Andrew _______________________________________________ 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: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
