Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia Foundation/2015/Community consultation/2015-03-06

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2A00:1028:9192:FA72:CD7D:2DB7:C33E:9442[edit]

Response by 2A00:1028:9192:FA72:CD7D:2DB7:C33E:9442 16:16, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

2A00:1028:9192:FA72:CD7D:2DB7:C33E:9442's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Wikipedia by byla dobrá stránka kdyby v ní někteří lidé nepsaly takové nesmysli. Některé lidi dáváte jako admini i když s to vůbec nezaslouží (protože na Wikipedii nedělají nic jenom opisují z jiných stránek.

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"Wikipedia would be a good site if it, some people did not write such nonsense. Some people like you admini albeit it does not deserve (because they do nothing to Wikipedia only describe from other sites."

109.248.73.52[edit]

Response by 109.248.73.52 16:17, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

109.248.73.52's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Википедия - отличный сайт и я голосую за его дальнейшее процветание!

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"Wikipedia - an excellent site and I vote for its continued prosperity!"

169.139.0.12[edit]

Response by 169.139.0.12 16:21, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

169.139.0.12's thoughts on question 2[edit]

i tink dat wikepedia is vure gud 4 stuf lik reserch and stuf so dat hoamwork and stuf lik dat so yah so yah so um dat ting and hoamwerk and gud halp and stuf lik dat and yah and wekepida is gude and stuf so be gud and stuf and kepe doin it gud becus yah< DAT GENIUS DOUGH

116.202.36.103[edit]

Response by 116.202.36.103 16:32, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

116.202.36.103's thoughts on question 2[edit]

if wikipedia provide the user to edit the info for their content but original don't change .it will change after the checking of any back-end user....... provide 100% accurate data.... provide up to date data.... provide the data in easiest language by which every one can understand(means use easy words not artificial words to elaborate anything)....... In case of audio/Video it will provide the direct download link at any language in which they can be dubbed...

Bell Ward[edit]

Response by 86.152.235.39 16:35, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bell Ward's thoughts on question 1[edit]

Convergence is happening a lot everywhere and is accelerating and the resulting technological singularity is fast approaching.

Bell Ward's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Wikipedia and Wikimedia can and I think should aim to continuously expand and to include all data. Currently there are large amounts of data not carried by Wikipedia which as a regular user is noticeable to me frequently. The current criteria for inclusion is too limited and therefore precludes lots of interesting and useful information. I often look up people and organisations of note, both current and historical, and normally find some or plenty of info via google but quite often nothing on Wikipedia. Sometimes when I'm particularly surprised to find nothing on Wikipedia I've looked into it and found your pages where the data was posted but then was deleted by someone. How bizarre. I suppose that perhaps one of your issues is cost so storage of data has to be kept within finite bounds that are affordable to you. One of the main limitations of this is that, if I remember correctly, you subsist off donations only. Well how about starting a commercial entity to run separate but alongside the main companies and to help fund them. I could list you 1,000 income streams that you could easily generate that wouldn't undermine the purity of the non profit aspect of the main work. I could expand on the above, if you like, and if you'd like to follow this up then you're welcome to email me at divineartuk at yahoo.co.uk Keep up the good work and thanks to all of you and your illustrious founder for all the great work you all do, regards, Bell Ward

Thanks for sharing your ideas, Bell. --Lgruwell-WMF (talk) 01:58, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

62.227.2.238[edit]

Response by 62.227.2.238 16:55, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Meiner Meinung nach sollte man nur mit Quellenangaben etwas hinzufügen oder ändern können. Ich schreibe zur Zeit an meiner Facharbeit und kann das meiste leider nicht nutzen,da ich "vertrauenswürdige" Quellen angeben muss..

Translation: In my opinion, you should only add or change something if you provide the source data. I'm currently working on my Thesis and I can't use most stuff because I have to use "trusted" sources ..

66.83.200.178[edit]

Response by 66.83.200.178 17:01, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

66.83.200.178's thoughts on question 2[edit]

give links for other resoucres

14.3.152.36[edit]

Response by 14.3.152.36 17:09, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

質問1への私の考え[edit]

I feel just now that music is very important for our world to our future.

質問2への私の考え[edit]

First of all, I just now really respect and trust and so on to you. I think very important thing that you will involve in who like all working people on you.

88.254.205.155[edit]

Response by 88.254.205.155 17:14, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

88.254.205.155'ın 2. soru hakkındaki düşünceleri[edit]

...bence çok iyi ama kim ne yazdığını belirtmeli

Machine translation; please improve: I think very well, but who should specify what it says


81.96.155.239[edit]

Response by 81.96.155.239 17:32, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Consoles, the latest batch of consoles (the Xbox One and the PS4) have many online features such as streaming, social networking and of course web browsers. As these tens of millions of new web users come online, a large number of them will discover and use Wikipedia, surely you should/could add some content for them?

130.179.80.140[edit]

Hi,

One trend I see, that pertains particularly to the younger generation, is that they seem take things at face value. They also want information now, and don't want to take the time to really research something. They just Google it and think that they are done. I am not that old myself (29), so I am also talking about my own generation. Wikipedia is an amazing resource and I am very grateful for it. My concern, is that a lot of younger people don't realize that Wikipedia is user-generated content, and they take it for 100% fact, which is obviously isn't because that is impossible! I think Wikipedia is a great starting point for in-depth research, and a great spot for quick stuff (like what is the capital of France), but I am very worried that people use it for more complex things (like diagnosing themselves) and that is problematic. I don't really have a solution. I just think it is a trend, and something to be aware of.

Keep up the good work. You guys are awesome.

Briankharvey[edit]

Response by Briankharvey 17:46, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Briankharvey's thoughts on question 2[edit]

One of the (many) wonderful things about Wikipedia is that it's a web site, not an "app," which means that I can read it in my favorite browser, with my favorite customizations. /Please/ don't ruin that in a misguided effort to appeal to mobile users.

I agree. Apps depend on the platform, whereas the web version is available for every browser and device. Just improve the website. --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:02, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Martijn Hoekstra[edit]

Response by Martijn Hoekstra 17:47, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Martijn Hoekstra's thoughts on question 1[edit]

As the amount of content per active user continues to grow, more emphasis is being put on maintaining quality rather than creating quality. The wiki model will show itself more and more inadequate for the task, and new tooling will be created to curate and stabilise content rather than grow in volume. Cross wiki navigation will become more important. A subject can be seen from multiple angles. A dictionary entry and an encyclopedic article are natural allies, and people can easily navigate to what they want to see. Curation and quality rating will be prominently visible, and it will be easier to create low content quality. The projects needs for flexible software with a unified interface is acknowledged and supported.

BLPs with their natural attraction to spam on the one hand and the risk of harm on the other will prove to be too difficult for Wikipedia, and Wikipedia will admit defeat, significantly raising the criteria for inclusion on the subject so that only a fraction of the BLPs remain.

Martijn Hoekstra's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Quality of content is easily identifiable. Suspect contributions will be flagged as such for editors and readers alike. Healthy disagreements will be visible to the reader as well. Disputes are acknowledged and even celebrated.

193.159.101.109[edit]

Response by 193.159.101.109 17:50, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

193.159.101.109s Gedanken zu Frage 1[edit]

das eintauchen in die virtuelle welt durch z.b. Oculus Rift

Translation: Delving into the virtual world with e.g. Oculus Rift

49.15.218.23[edit]

Response by 49.15.218.23 17:54, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

49.15.218.23's thoughts on question 1[edit]

Other major trends are increase in the speed of internet world wide, usage of wikipedia increases rapidly. Increase in the information sharing through cloud usage.

49.15.218.23's thoughts on question 2[edit]

1.The new users should find the mobile wikimedia is as good as the desktop or laptop website. 2.The mobile wikimedia sites should take minimal resources or space than the desktop websites. 3.The information should not be decreased for the mobile websites.

The Wikipedia mobile site has the same information as the regular site, just in a different format.--GByrd (WMF) (talk) 01:20, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

173.238.166.189[edit]

Response by 173.238.166.189 18:06, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

173.238.166.189's thoughts on question 1[edit]

Major trends that will affect will be access of Wiki information though alternative mediums such as add-ons to social media on websites. AKA it will need to be a fully functional plug-in for all sorts of new and upcoming ways of communicating information in order to be able to be accessed through mobile devices. [Creating copy/paste code of all encompassing HTML [+5], CSS and others for whichever new type of website emerges]

173.238.166.189's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Healthy projects would include staying up-to-date and writing history as it happens using the most non-biased sourcing. This will help eliminate any and all discrepancies concerning the chronological as well as factual evidence of events as they occur, as well as after the fact. We live in a new world, and it is important to stay on top of global occurrences - I believe that Wiki will be a strong push into the future regarding free, limitless and widespread information.

ELF3E7[edit]

Response by ELF3E7 18:12, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Я привык к нашему консервативному способу передачи мысли. Письмо, Звук, Мимика, Физическое воздействие. Но с радостью приму новшества связанные с новым интерфейсом передачи. Как только Вики фонду понадобиться мое участие как компетентного члена или авось компетентного или пальцем в небо компетентного.

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"I'm used to our conservative method of transmitting thoughts. Letter, sound, facial expressions, physical impact. But gladly accept innovations associated with the new interface of transmission. Once Vicki Fund need my participation as a competent member or perhaps a competent or the mark of a competent."

AdamSilver55[edit]

Response by AdamSilver55 18:12, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

AdamSilver55's thoughts on question 1[edit]

I anticipate increased religious extremeism and religious conflict. As more people become aware of the diversity within their own sects, faiths and across faiths, all religious terrorism will increase.

AdamSilver55's thoughts on question 2[edit]

It is important for WikiMedia to teach tolerance, understanding and how to develop healthy individualities. As people deprecate the importance of religion to survival and understand that material abundance, not spiritual rigidity, promotes spiritual progress, we can stem the increase of religious terrorism. Note that I am NOT limiting myself to radical Islam.

204.109.64.61[edit]

Response by 204.109.64.61 18:19, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

204.109.64.61's thoughts on question 1[edit]

Chief Keef, GLO GANG and other chicago artists of the Drill-Hop music scene

204.109.64.61's thoughts on question 2[edit]

It should look fresh and dope so it can attract youth.

69.165.205.246[edit]

Response by 69.165.205.246 18:31, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

69.165.205.246's thoughts on question 1[edit]

Some pages have become evergreen in that they will never need updating, convert these into a hardcover book for the home.

69.165.205.246's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Healthy wikipedia pages would be free of ulterior motives. Example, a page would not have information designed to lead the public into believing a falsehood to be true. Example: a drug company would not be allowed to have "studie" reports published on Wikipedia when the goal of such studies is to sell pills for the maker. Such pages have been abused into making people speak with their doctors about a drug when the real intent is to get those people to describe a condition and receive the alreay popular leading pill, the new "studies" are in fact nothing more than a random poll and are pure propaganda to achieve a reaction. Wikipedia would do well to maintain it's credibility by stoutly avoiding this type of manipulation, it's unfortunately common already. Opinion pages should be eliminated.

196.29.191.56[edit]

Response by 196.29.191.56 18:36, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

196.29.191.56 رأيك بالسؤال الأول[edit]

..بعض الدول فقيرة من حيث الوسائل التقنيه فنرجو استخدام الوسيله الا نسب لتمليك المعلومه.اكتب هنا...

"Developing countries are poor in terms on technology. So kindly provide the best way to enable Wikipedia knowledge for them"

196.29.191.56 رأيك بالسؤال الثاني[edit]

..المعلومه الصحيحه كنز خا صه العلميه اكتب هنا...

Correct information is a treasure, especially the scientific one.

116.202.34.184[edit]

Response by 116.202.34.184 18:38, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

116.202.34.184's thoughts on question 1[edit]

There are countless number of articles on wikipedia, if you could compile in a way that a user can educate himself on a particular subject in a wholesome manner that would be great. I mean you should provide bundled articles on basic subjects like indian history, european history, world macroeconomy, finance, basic biology etc. Bundles just like ebooks on mobile platform. All you need to do is compile the links in the bundles. Those bundles will upgrade itself simultaneously with the links

The sites do already have this feature! If you click on "Create a book" in the sidebar (under the "Print/Export" heading), you can create a list of articles, that can be bundled into downloadable format, and that are updated as often as you like. For example, w:en:Book:Astronomy. See w:en:Help:Books for a step-through-guide. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

116.202.34.184's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Earlier wikipedia articles used to be simple. All I wanted was to know, "what something is" in simple manner, and it was there. But now the articles have become difficult to read and comprehend. This is probably because most of the authors are those who belong to academia and write something from their literature survey done for research purpose. I would suggest that you keep your priority towards making wikipedia simple; make it lesser knowledge intensive and accessible to mass, especially for mobile platforms. Indeed there are going to be billion users soon but how well can they make use of wikipedia is completely going to depend upon "ease in reading"

Have you tried our mobile site? Some readers enjoy it on their desktop or laptop computer in addition to their mobile device.--GByrd (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

176.251.159.15[edit]

Response by 176.251.159.15 18:42, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You can make wikimedia look less daul and more attractive.

129.67.86.87[edit]

Response by 129.67.86.87 19:16, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

129.67.86.87's thoughts on question 1[edit]

Wikipedia needs to address non-internet connected users, and offline use. This provides a "quiet" forum for users to expand their own personal views on articles, at which point editors can debate the merits of including them. This would enable a true "encyclopedia anyone can edit", by allowing anyone to edit their copy as they see fit, and upload/merge this copy "on-demand". This has the additional benefit of enabling wider access to remote communities, or to those who pay large amounts (including mobile!) to access bandwidth. To enable this, software needs to run on end-users machines, with a full copy of Wikipedia - this needs wikimedia's support. Wikimedia may consider pre-installing wikipedia on devices, through negotiations with manufacturers. Some software, such as XOWA already exists, but needs far more work to become practicable - the end-user experience remains poor due to difficulties in setting it up, and in use.

129.67.86.87's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Keeping it simple is a concern on wikipedia, as the natural response to discussions is often to increase the complexity of the "paperwork" required to perform edits. Wikipedia strongly risks becoming stratified, with old-hands controlling the access to articles. Tools such as Visual Editor don't really address this, which is a far more fundamental barrier to contribution.

Limited access to references makes it difficult to verify what has been written. To make wikipedia more transparent, wikimedia might consider partnering with academic institutions to provide full-text databases which allow for better citations within wikipedia through open-access articles.

2.173.114.95[edit]

Response by 2.173.114.95 19:18, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

vermutlich warden neben Bilddatein auch mehr kleine Videosequenzen nötig sein, mit allen daran hängenden Software und Urheberrechtproblemen

(Translation)
"probably more small video sequences will be necessary next to the image files, with all related software and copyright issues"

JomartheGreat[edit]

Response by JomartheGreat 19:35, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

JomartheGreat's thoughts on question 1[edit]

About Filipino Musicians

JomartheGreat's thoughts on question 2[edit]

The US and Europe chart is wrong, it should be written that Anak is No.1 in U.S. and Canada, Asia and several European charts. Le Freak and You Don't Bring Me Flowers wasn't number one until 1979, If this is really number 2 like Gangnam Style, why Wiki doesn't even have Wikipedia Webpage Biography about Le Freak and Bring Me Flowers? Even Pinay news reporter Korina showed the Official Charts Company that all 50 countries with available and sufficent technology that it went number one in all countries especially in the U.S. for four weeks, Sir Jimbo and the whole Wikipedia Team, please buy a 2000 or the latest 2015 U.S. Billboard Hot 100 book so you can see the record of the songs that reached number one but you and your staff before you type that I'm crazy, idiotic, absurd and delusional person that doesn't know real music!!!!!!!

89.98.105.23[edit]

Response by 89.98.105.23 19:42, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

89.98.105.23's thoughts on question 1[edit]

There a trend for continued change, and the pace of change itself is accelerating.

89.98.105.23's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Keep listening to your users---don't expect to know what's best for them. Stay open and accepting. Focus on content and community rather than design details or the latest dynamic web applications.

96.5.162.213[edit]

Response by 96.5.162.213 19:42, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I do not like this website because the content can be changed by a anyone.

86.42.131.156[edit]

A more user friendly layout would be required as well as expanding the availible language translations.

Have you tried our mobile site on the desktop? Some readers enjoy it as an alternative to the full desktop version.--GByrd (WMF) (talk) 01:29, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

203.87.139.52[edit]

very good referrence

92.233.160.39[edit]

make the info so it cant be edited at all

2601:1:8700:FA2:F479:703A:5822:90E1[edit]

1) don't know the answer to this beyond mobile. 2) I like Wikipedia just the way it is. I have no interest in reading long articles on my iPhone; the screen is too small. All my research and extensive article reading is done on my desktop computer at home on a big high res screen. This is not likely to change, as it is easier and more efficient. On occasional trips, I would substitute a laptop computer for same, but my #1 preference by far is using my home desktop computer and 27" LED screen.

2601:1:9C00:12A8:9BE:4741:5AB3:812D[edit]

I am honestly not a fan of the ability to have anyone go in an edit a page to have a higher probability of receiving false information. My thought is to have a system that if someone does want to edit a page it must first be submitted to Wikipedia an properly researched for 100% valid information for anyone using Wikipedia for any quick source of information without wondering if what is said absolutely correct.

189.237.59.119[edit]

Response by 189.237.59.119 21:30, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Las ideas de 189.237.59.119 acerca de la pregunta 1[edit]

se necesita tener una buena pagina con informacion detallada y objetiva para su entendimiento

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"need to have a good site with detailed and objective information for understanding"

Las ideas de 189.237.59.119 acerca de la pregunta 2[edit]

tomar en cuenta la presentacion y elaboracion de la informacion hecha en wikipedia para que mas personas confien en esta pagina y ademas usar las redes sociales

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"taking into account the presentation and processing of the information made wikipedia so that more people trust in this page and also use social networks"

Raid5[edit]

Response by Raid5 21:40, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Raid5's thoughts on question 1[edit]

Site scalability of different size screens, W3C standards compliance and lightweight construction at least optionally.

Probably shouldn't be optional :) In particular, W3C accessibility standards are important for us to help people both on a great variety of devices. —Luis Villa (WMF) (talk) 01:38, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your answering. --Raid5 (talk) 20:39, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Raid5's thoughts on question 2[edit]

My answer is solely focused on editing (in particular infoboxes). More uniform appearance: the infoboxes and their parameters correspond to those of the English language Wikipedia (some values, of course, applied to nationally). More coherence in practice to the smallest detail: for example, what is necessary to link to etc.

1. At first reasonably large ground work (infobox)
2. Easier updateability in an automated way or manually
3. More time to actually writing articles

Benefits: faster response and similar in appearance of finished articles.
--Raid5 (talk) 21:40, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Raid5: Hi.
Re: automated updates - I believe that d:Wikidata:WikiProject Infoboxes partially covers what you are describing. I don't think it is widely used yet, but it is possible (and used in a few places) to populate an infobox with values directly from wikidata. E.g. The established_date parameter in w:en:Template:Infobox South African town will automatically pull info from Wikidata, if it is not overridden locally. This will eventually allow us to keep simple objective details in the central wikidata location (eg. "current population of France") and pull it into articles (particularly infoboxes) at all the wikis at once.
Re: standardized contents, and appearance - this is generally up to the individual communities. There have been many prototypes and discussions for aesthetic overhaul in the past, so it does remain a possibility for the future.
Re: what is necessary to link to - for editors that use VisualEditor, this is already implemented, if the template has the appropriate TemplateData added to indicate the [required/optional] parameters. E.g. try "Insert -> template -> infobox country" in a VE sandbox.
If that's not what you are describing, then please could you elaborate? Thanks :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:03, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for answering, it was a sufficient answer. "Standardized contents and appearance": I might get caught in too much details, but I'm confused with the many sorts of acting (editing habits). --Raid5 (talk) 20:30, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

174.20.163.185[edit]

Response by 174.20.163.185 21:42, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

174.20.163.185's thoughts on question 2[edit]

It wouldn't look like this with a totally unintuitive layout for answering these questions, and wouldn't have it's own markup language that only a select group of hyper-defensive trolls used to silence anyone who had good, cited information but didn't want to waste hours of their time arguing with people about formatting who have no idea what the content they are moderating even means. Probably it would be a snapshot copy of Wikipedia at some point but under a new name, with an intuitive and widely used format, and a removal of most of the power of admin levels/moderators. Yes, when I was a kid I changed the names of a few city council members on my towns home page, but that was easy and made me want to change things with real content when I was in college. I had a lot of information that I wanted to share, and it was well sourced and documented. When I went to try to get it up onto Wikipedia it became clear that it would take way more time than I had that finals period (it was mostly in a term paper, that I got an A on one of the top 5 universities in the U.S.by the way, and I was hoping to basically upload that with some basic edits). A good information sharing site doesn't have a secret back end code, that you have to seek out to see how the information is being generated, and doesn't hide the tool designed to help with that in the options section that no one ever checks. Sure, multimedia, increased indirect search options, and more content would be nice, but it won't keep this site relevant when next gen concatenated processed search result summaries are available from google or wolfram or some other group buried behind Siri in a few years. Unless you make this site more accessible to new editors, people won't waste their time breaking down your door to share their info here, they will just put it somewhere else where people aren't total assholes if you don't learn their secret code. I love Wikipedia, but I use it less and less as search engines get better and people publish more and better information in places with cleaner and simpler formats, or just on their personal sites.

84.58.129.36[edit]

Response by 84.58.129.36 21:47, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

84.58.129.36's thoughts on question 1[edit]

Major trends:

  • Online Learning
  • Augmented/Virtual Reality


84.58.129.36's thoughts on question 2[edit]

  • Online Learning
    • Since Wikipedia is a great source of information, it's horrible to use it as a learning platform. The learning process is shifting more and more from the classroom to the cyberspace. Wikimedia could offer a platform for online courses which provide free/open learning materials. This would improve the self-education alot.
    • Also some things can be better explained by using audio-visual tools. Just for example, there are a tons of Youtube videos with educational background - why not having a WikiTube? The current Wikimedia videos have a very poor quality.
    • An audio/video streaming service for lectures/conferences would be nice, too.
  • Augmented/Virtual Reality

A combination of "Online Learning" and AR/VR would be awesome! Just imagine experiencing a school chemistry experiment, where you can observe it in 3D. Or doing a space walk on the International Space Station. But yeah, the technology isn't there yet... ;)

Amareeka[edit]

Response by Amareeka 21:48, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

it needs a better easy to read fot, or more space in between words, a bold size, organized written material.

97.121.133.90[edit]

Response by 97.121.133.90 21:56, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

97.121.133.90's thoughts on question 1[edit]

I think that it will go fine... just you need more articles...

41.189.162.8[edit]

Response by 41.189.162.8 22:02, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

DOTGO Mobile Platform is the best way to go. It is an obvious fact that the next billion users of the internet would have a chunk being from Africa.But getting people onto the internet is a major problem that seems to be taking a chunk of time to achieve. So, imagine if all these users could access the internet through common USSD platforms. That would be fantastic.

169.204.229.26[edit]

Response by 169.204.229.26 22:05, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

169.204.229.26's thoughts on question 1[edit]

faster and esier use of the site

169.204.229.26's thoughts on question 2[edit]

all web based

197.237.234.227[edit]

Response by 197.237.234.227 22:07, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please make editing pages easier because I'm having a hard time try'nna figure out how to edit some text. Thanks in advance !

87.208.52.211[edit]

Response by 87.208.52.211 22:13, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

87.208.52.211's thoughts on question 1[edit]

mobile should have all the functionality pc offers, be it with smaller steps in its unfolding of info

87.208.52.211's thoughts on question 2[edit]

All edits should remain visible, even vandalization. Unifiable dissident edits may form a fork.

37.26.148.158[edit]

Response by 37.26.148.158 22:15, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Because of you are free use you rely on donations I think it is right, and in time with the increase of users the contributions will grow up
Plus you should sell content to other applications and thus will create an additional revenue source
Kind of what Google presents on search page, a kind of abbreviated value
And expand the use of edit content from a variety of wiki websites and export it
And this is the answer for the trends Question, that people do not need\have the power to Read the full value but mainly outline
היו ת שהמיזמיים חינמים למשתמשים אתם נסמכים על תרומות לדעתי זה נכון ובמשך הזמן בהתאם לגידול המשתמשים תגדלנה גם התרומות
ובנוסף עליכם למכור תוכן לישומים אחרים ובכך תיצרו מקור הכנסה נוסף
כעין מה שגוגל מציג בדף חיפוש מעין ערך מקוצר
וכן להרחיב את את השימוש בתוכן ערוך מתוך שלל אתרי ויקי
ודבר זה הינו תשובה לטרנדים שלאנשים אין צורך \ כח לעבור על ערך מלא אלא על ראשי פרקים גרידא
Thanks for your comment! --Lgruwell-WMF (talk) 02:01, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Dsimic[edit]

Response by Dsimic 23:08, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Dsimic's thoughts on question 1[edit]

The major trend is that there are fewer and fewer good editors on board. You should focus on how to bring in more good editors, with solid knowledge in their area of expertise, not how to present low-quality content to more readers. The content is the key, not the form.

Well, I'm certainly in favor of not presenting low-quality content. :-) I have a couple of questions... first, we've had trouble identifying a single (or joint) measure of article quality, short of hand-coding them, which becomes very difficult to do at scale. Do you have any ideas for that? Your question also raises the issue of how to identify/incentivize the involvement of "good" editors. What would you suggest that we do to locate them and convince them to join us? Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:35, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Dsimic's thoughts on question 2[edit]

The more good editors they have, the healthier projects are. No amount of "polishing the turd" is a substitute for that.


REVISI[edit]

Response by 74.139.214.170 00:48, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

74.139.214.170's thoughts on question 1[edit]

I would like to see subsets of information associated with each term that is researched. For example I just searched betaine, and was brought to a cell's resistance to drought, and other extreme comditions, but was unable to recover the information about why it is in my post-workout powder. Also, when certain broad subjects are searched, such as a major biological pathway, the subset of information pertaining to a particular part of the biological pathway would be very nice, so people do not have to flip through pages and pages about their topic in order to find their SPECIFIC information. This could be in the form of suggested information that others have found useful when searching the same word, or phrase. You click HERE if this is what you are looking for.

74.139.214.170's thoughts on question 2[edit]

27.111.71.67[edit]

Response by 27.111.71.67 00:49, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You should have a search bar on the top of your Wiki App that allows people to search things that relate to entries and the App brings it up but most importantly SUMMARISED.

fish[edit]

When I click on the name of the fish your web site it doesn't show a pitcher of the fish,if you web site would do this I think everyone that visit this web site wood keep coming back to your web site,you may losing a lot people,you almost lost me.

god[edit]

Response by god 01:20, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

god's thoughts on question 1[edit]

the next billion users will be using mobile devices, thus causing them to not need the computer version of the site ever.

god's thoughts on question 2[edit]

wikimedia projects would need to be inclusive to all races and ethnicities, and allow for people of all age groups to contribute. Also the site would need to be easier to edit

Neurogeek[edit]

Response by Neurogeek 01:23, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Neurogeek's thoughts on question 1[edit]

A relatively small contribution of the Wikipedia is to provide information on the historical state of knowledge over time. As Wikipedia becomes older and older - and the new users were in their infancy when the Wikipedia started - the HISTORY portion of the page will be of interest to understanding the history of ideas and the state of knowledge at a particular point in history. Furthermore, the US Patent and Trademark Office, like its counterparts in other countries, uses the Wikipedia history to compare the state of knowledge at the time of a patent application with what the Applicant has claimed to invent.

Neurogeek's thoughts on question 2[edit]

The Wikipedia will continue to provide history data for at least a decade, and perhaps longer. The Wikipedia will request funding from such organizations as find the history data useful to their mission, such as patent offices and patent law firms.

81.156.241.215[edit]

Response by 81.156.241.215 01:37, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

81.156.241.215's thoughts on question 1[edit]

...write here… I think there will be an expectation of much more multimedia content (graphics, more images, videos, links to authoritative documentaries). To continue to be relevant, Wikipedia will need to consider these forms of information presentation. If such content is not available on Wikipedia itself, there could be links, with a possible quality certification mark, to other sites that provide more multimedia content.

81.156.241.215's thoughts on question 2[edit]

...write here… Wikimedia desperately needs to be more inclusive. There needs to be more input from women and people from non-European cultures (I belong to neither of these groups so I have no particular axe to grind). Knowledge has for long been the preserve of white men and Wikimedia/Wikipedia seem to be following that trend rather than challenging it. Women contributors feel marginalised and their views disregarded and voices from many African societies (prominent among your next billion users) are being ignored. Much content from these contributors might not lend itself to rigorous source documents and bibliographies, but it does not make the information less worthwhile. Perhaps a system of trusted analysts/vetters needs to be set up for communities where there is less documentary evidence than is normally required by Wikipedia. The majority of the world's population and therefore potential users, do not speak a mother tongue covered by the top 20 Wikipedias by language, so their right to contribute to online knowledge needs to be protected by an organisation that intends to make knowledge freely available to all.

162.198.24.185[edit]

Response by 162.198.24.185 01:38, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

162.198.24.185's thoughts on question 1[edit]

...facetime,googlewiki, and wikibook

162.198.24.185's thoughts on question 2[edit]

...they would include many deatails,a background, a update page

THE FUTURE[edit]

Response by 186.136.0.135 01:46, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

186.136.0.135's thoughts on question 1[edit]

The need for information trees, backdoors, and query history analysis. Back and forth call and reply, flagging.

186.136.0.135's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Educational, interactive and with strong dialectical constructions.

Nicholas Cage[edit]

Response by Nicholas Cage 01:47, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nicholas Cage's thoughts on question 1[edit]

More people use either android or apple so make a wikipedia app for both these platforms

Nicholas Cage's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Wikimedia should have more fancy looking website to make it more attractive and interesting to read

174.53.183.6[edit]

Response by 174.53.183.6 01:48, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

174.53.183.6's thoughts on question 1[edit]

Why do you want opinions on such a general topic? Your question lacks focus IMO.

174.53.183.6's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Your user base is going to grow and your site/organization is going to get more and more unmanageable IMO. Your stupid pride to eschew paid ads may become your downfall. I already know many editors play favorites. You should have ads like AdSense that are tied to content. You will make millions from the revenue and be able to support paid profession staff to oversee the editors and I hope achieve a high level of quality and ethics.

If you want/need money, run some paid ads. I will never donate to any site that has such vast earning potential.

65.129.255.32[edit]

Response by 65.129.255.32 02:00, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

65.129.255.32's thoughts on question 2[edit]

I think it should be as it is right now. It's fairly good right now & keep up the great work, although you don't really count as a scholarly article ANYWAY just keep it the same.

122.221.76.146[edit]

Response by 122.221.76.146 02:30, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

質問2への私の考え[edit]

一部のユーザーに、明らかに「独裁者気取り」の人間がいる。脅しやすかしで他人を屈服させるのが目的らしい。私はそうした輩によって、1年余りの時間を棒に振った。このサイトを健全にするには、こうした「勘違い君」の追放からだ。

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"The part of the user, obviously there are human "dictator affectation". It seems purpose is to compel the others in the threatened or watermark. I by such fellows, shook of more than one year time bar. To healthy this site, I from the expulsion of these "misunderstanding kun"."

209.169.211.197[edit]

Response by 209.169.211.197 02:50, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

209.169.211.197's thoughts on question 1[edit]

I think the next big thing for Wikipedia and its users will be its establishment as a legitimate research source. Unfortunately, most teachers won't accept it as a source, even though I consider it to be a top legitimate source.


74.69.229.21[edit]

Response by 74.69.229.21 03:10, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

74.69.229.21's thoughts on question 2[edit]

The obvious left wing, and particularly feminist, bias of this site has become distracting. It has been widely reported on, and it needs to be addressed if this site is to continue to be taken seriously.

71.84.92.207[edit]

Response by 71.84.92.207 03:38, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

71.84.92.207's thoughts on question 1[edit]

People want Outline style answers to access on the go, more specific material/summarize. Save the wordy stuff in a link if we want to read on.

71.84.92.207's thoughts on question 2[edit]

The site with expand and thrive with a live chat box to ask specific questions with or/ leave a message and get it anwsered... will engulf the "Ask so and so" type sites

your welcome

-future c.e.o

219.174.32.34[edit]

Response by 219.174.32.34 03:59, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

質問1への私の考え[edit]

ここにいる、みた、投稿した。と、言う時間の共有。
I am here, Look, Write.

質問2への私の考え[edit]

運営、管理者の、ボランティア、利益なし、状態での運営。
それはつまり、(ボランティアを装う(参加者・管理者)たちなどの)、有料の教育、報道との、競争。

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"Management, administrator, volunteer, without the benefit, management in the state.
That means, (pretend to volunteer (such as participant business) people), education paid, with news, competition."

69.117.25.173[edit]

Response by 69.117.25.173 04:06, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

69.117.25.173's thoughts on question 1[edit]

Q:What major trends would you identify in addition to mobile and the next billion users? A: I imagine the internet becoming a place that involves art to describe concepts, a place that can readily and easily show how things work. using language and vision, we will unify the world by sharing our thoughts and ideas, because, hey, it's the internet. we could do what we want.

69.117.25.173's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Q:Based on the future trends that you think are important, what would thriving and healthy Wikimedia projects look like?

A thriving and healthy wikimedia project should have the same emphasis Ivan Brunetti uses when we teaches art. we start off with simple blocks, and animate the faces however we like. that way we get to know the world, and the world gets to know us.


59.97.204.116[edit]

Response by 59.97.204.116 04:40, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

59.97.204.116's thoughts on question 2[edit]

The design of the website seriously needs an overhaul. The layout is really not good & barely competitive compared to today's scenarios. Plus the fonts are also not ergonomic. My only request is to change the design & make it somewhat materialistic so that people can comfortably gain knowledge. Other than that the site is awesome & is fulfilling all of my needs.

174.49.132.243[edit]

Response by 174.49.132.243 05:13, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

174.49.132.243's thoughts on question 2[edit]

As a YouTube Creator and guitar teacher, I find there are a lot more people who are seeking free education on the internet rather than paying for instruction. At the same time, much of the internet remains unstructured and it's difficult to motivate people to use the available to its fullest extent. There's a lot of casual surfing of education material, but as I teacher I hope for as much serious engagement as possible.

Basically, I think Wikiversity needs as many resources as we can throw at it. I'd like to see WikiMedia projects that help the next billion users get good, free education that integrates them into the global economy. I envision a group of expert/professional teachers who can use the knowledge base of the internet to distill the most essential information from one subject area into organized curricula. Those curricula can be studied and improved by students as they work through the material, much the way wikipedia improved by users now. If the social motivation from participating in an educational institution could be harnessed through virtual communities, and secure credentialing could be provided, some very significant economic bridges could be overcome by anyone with time and internet access.

Also, I think it's critical that creators have effective means of supporting themselves. Right now, it's easy to contribute, but not on the full-time basis that creates the high level of expertise needed to guide these projects. The more creators can integrate their work with crowdfunding mechanisms or other forms of financial support, the more serious creators we will find leading the way to free knowledge.


50.27.215.208[edit]

Response by 50.27.215.208 05:56, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

50.27.215.208's thoughts on question 2[edit]

In just a short period of time Wikipedia has changed the way the world seeks information on an entire spectrum of history. I still remember the first day that someone in my office stated that they were reading background information on a topic that was directly influencing how our office performed. That was in 2010. It's incredible the rise of popularity of Wikipedia over just these past few years. I can read biographies, the history of music, every living human being who has contributed to the world.

I don't think that Wikipedia should be so concerned about mobile transformations. Wikipedia is literally the library of the world. Not just the library of Congress. In Europe, the trend is to digitize entire libraries that will soon be accessed online. Everything I want to learn about anything, I can get through Wikipedia.

Wikipedia managers are doing an outstanding job managing the transitions of Wikipedia. It's an insurmountable job. I hope that governments will take responsibility to maintain Wikipedia, which is essential for storing the history of mankind. Especially the here and now. Now, intimate details and specifics of cultural transitions can be instantly logged.

there is no way of accurately knowing what directions Wikipedia will change even in the next few years. There is no way I could possibly predict this either. But I can say that I deeply appreciate the ease of use and the incredible amount of information that is being logged by Wikipedia on a daily basis. Unbelievable. I wish you continued success and most sincere appreciation.

Devopam[edit]

Response by Devopam 05:58, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Devopam's thoughts on question 1[edit]

  • Social Media integration
  • Structural changes in the content management protocols (including review rules)
  • Machinated access to content via secure protocols

Devopam's thoughts on question 2[edit]

  • Wikimedia projects will need to align with current behavioral patterns of users (including eliciting participation/involvement to make users feel important about their contribution more than the current offering)
  • Manual reviews/ audits will need to give way to smarter engines that will help reduce burden on both reviewers and content creators by reducing rework

180.200.138.73[edit]

Response by 180.200.138.73 06:07, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

180.200.138.73's thoughts on question 1[edit]

Wanting more interactive and visual information

180.200.138.73's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Introduce interactive features such as manipulatable diagrams and include infographs to allow information to be understood easily


184.12.241.143[edit]

Response by 184.12.241.143 06:10, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Billions Of Viewers?

Circle/Point out the specific parts that usually need replacement on the picture, so anyone can see exactly where the problem is and what needs to be replaced. Thank You, Tim Byrd @RoxxHoffner on twitter

107.217.234.60[edit]

Response by 107.217.234.60 06:27, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

107.217.234.60's thoughts on question 1[edit]

In addition to users coming on from a greater variety of places I think that the opposite will hold true - that existing users are now going to be able to use Wikipedia to seek more in-depth information about some of these other places than they do right now. I think it would be cool to have a "Tell Me More" button that maybe brings up an optional question box or drop down box to be able to say what you would like to know more about. So if it's a short article or stub about a small city or region the choices might be "history, economy, education, cultural attractions, public transit, etc." So it might be helpful for local editors if they realize that there is an interest for further information on a certain topic.

As for mobile or even non-mobile an easy process to make very simple edits, maybe three characters or less in length. Not being a skilled wikieditor sometimes I'd love to just be able to close a parenthesis or change a "to" to a "too", where appropriate, etc.

220.225.83.149[edit]

Response by 220.225.83.149 06:49, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

220.225.83.149's thoughts on question 1[edit]

In india/Asia here 3g technology along with small ISP are emerging rapidly through 2.4 & 5.8 GhZ wifi connection. 4G is at doorstep to launch. public wifi hotspot area is increasing with low cost of ownership. which brings many 1st generation of computer illiterate mobile (android) internet users. wiki-P. is surely a vast source of knowledge which need to maintain quality as well as accuracy. needed effort on this matter.

This is really interesting. When you say that we need to maintain quality, do you think all these new internet users will make edits to Wikipedia that will harm its accuracy? Is this because they're new to the internet, and still learning how it works? At the same time, it sounds like a really important opportunity to bring more knowledge to people who will be learning and exploring for the first time. Do you think that people who are new to the internet will have different needs for images vs. text, because of literacy concerns? Katherine (WMF) (talk) 01:30, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

220.225.83.149's thoughts on question 2[edit]

which brings many 1st generation of computer illiterate mobile (android) internet users. wiki-P. is surely a vast source of knowledge which need to maintain quality as well as accuracy. needed effort on this matter.

196.43.134.183[edit]

Response by 196.43.134.183 06:52, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

196.43.134.183's thoughts on question 1[edit]

the best way to keep the website good for the next billion users, lets say years is to go down to grounds forexample in every country in the world, have a center of data collection and by that information will mature quick and easier when got from people that know it well. am ugandan and i havent seen any of your offices around. and sometimes i need info about some persons from my region and cannot find any info. i hope that makes perfect sense.k thanks again.

196.43.134.183's thoughts on question 2[edit]

the first answer explains it all

محمد العدوان ( المسسافر)[edit]

Response by محمد العدوان ( المسسافر) 06:56, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

محمد العدوان ( المسسافر) رأيك بالسؤال الأول[edit]

كم اتمني ان تكون هذه الصفحات اعم واشمل

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"How I wish that these pages are more diverse and comprehensive"

محمد العدوان ( المسسافر) رأيك بالسؤال الثاني[edit]

رائعه ونحن بحاجه الي دعمكم ايضا لبناء تشاركيه متكامله

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"Fantastic, we require your support also to build an integral collaborative platform"


Gkgy[edit]

Response by Gkgy 07:07, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Gkgy's thoughts on question 1[edit]

my username is Gkgy,and the first question in my view is that mobile phone is become more easy to get and so do as the tablet pc.the next trend will be everyone will seek for spirital porduct

Gkgy's thoughts on question 2[edit]

We need more cool design and qulity checking with some experts like “mindmanager”--the net picture(the blueprint)

212.252.57.200[edit]

Response by 212.252.57.200 07:31, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

212.252.57.200'ın 1. soru hakkındaki düşünceleri[edit]

Mobil uygulama veya mobil site tarzında ise benim görüşüm günümüzde insanlar canlı renkleri seviyor ve renkler insanların ruh hallerini de etkiler yani girişteki bir renklilik onları daha da site ile ilgili sıcakdüşünmesini sağlayabilir ve arayüzü basit olursa kullanıcılar çok kafayormaz ve küçük kullanıcılar içinde kullanmasıkolay olur eğer konuyu yanlış anladıysam özür dilerim teşekkürler.

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"The mobile application or mobile site style is my opinion that loves nowadays people live colors and color also affects where people's souls that can provide some color to sıcakdüşün about them than the site at the entrance and the interface does not kafayor very simple if users and would kullanmasıkolay in small users if the subject is wrong I understand I'm sorry, thank you."

46.60.11.247[edit]

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته المساهمة بالنشر أكثر وأكثر وثمّ استخدام الترجمة للوصول الى العالمية حيث أن الشعوب الغربية تحب التواصل مع البلاد الأخرى من خلال نشاطات كالصور مثلا والتواصل مع الأخرين ونشر القضية

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"In the name of God the Merciful Peace and God's mercy and blessings be upon you to contribute more and more newsworthy and then use the translator to get to the World Bank, where people like to communicate with other countries through activities such as images, for example, and to communicate with others and publish case"

193.153.214.204[edit]

Response by 193.153.214.204 08:43, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Las ideas de 193.153.214.204 acerca de la pregunta 1[edit]

Creo que aparecerán los asistentes personales robotizados. En una primera fase proporcionarán información, avisarán de eventos y noticias que nos interesen y/o afectan, Etc. En una segunda fase, serán capaces de realizar ciertas tareas domésticas.

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"I think the robotic personal assistants appear. The first phase will provide information, warn of events and news that interest us and / or impact, etc. In a second phase, will be able to perform certain chores."

Las ideas de 193.153.214.204 acerca de la pregunta 2[edit]

Creo que Wikimedia debería ser dotada de una interfaz tipo Dr. Watson de IBM que basándose en el cuerpo de información de Wikipedia, pudiera ofrecer información en respuesta a determinadas preguntas escritas y/o habladas en lenguaje natural.

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"I think Wikimedia should be provided with an interface type Dr. Watson IBM's body based on information from Wikipedia, could provide information in response to written questions and / or spoken natural language."

139.216.246.65[edit]

Response by 139.216.246.65 09:47, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You guys need to get sponsors. So it will help you (admin etc) a lot.

212.126.101.86[edit]

Response by 212.126.101.86 09:48, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

212.126.101.86 رأيك بالسؤال الأول[edit]

...اكتب هنا...على ويكيبيديا ان تقوم باضافه تعديلات على الويكي بالهاتف المحمول لان هنالك فروقات عند استخدام ويكي بتطبيق وبرا و استخدامها عن طريق جوجل

Machine translation; please improve: on Wikipedia you add amendments to the wiki mobile phone because there are differences when you use a wiki application, land and used by Google

212.126.101.86 رأيك بالسؤال الثاني[edit]

اكيد سوف تصبح المعلومات مثمره اكثر

Machine translation; please improve: Downright fruitful information will become more

194.81.238.217[edit]

Response by 194.81.238.217 10:05, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

update the look f Wikipedia make it appeal to younger people such as students.

109.56.225.144[edit]

Response by 109.56.225.144 10:26, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

109.56.225.144's thoughts on question 1[edit]

i dont know how it will be - but i do know that the internet is thriving - and in that sense you have to be able to get more and more information on the net - it is not all yet there - i still sometimes look in my dictionary - or my leksicon - and i need to know that all i need to know is online - so i can get to it and grab the information when i need it . books are beginging to be out dated - and also other medias - even television is no longer the top media that people use under the age of 30 - it is the internet the computer the mobile the tablet


182.249.241.85[edit]

Response by 182.249.241.85 10:40, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

182.249.241.85's thoughts on question 1[edit]

everyone can get more accurate information in internet and wikipedia close

182.249.241.85's thoughts on question 2[edit]

wikipedia can not survive in future

87.92.253.246[edit]

Response by 87.92.253.246 10:56, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

RUMA SIVU, TARVITSEE ENEMMÄN VÄREJÄ

Machine translation; please improve: UGLY SITE, NEEDS MORE COLORS

101.183.89.94[edit]

Response by 101.183.89.94 11:56, 3 March 2015 (UTC) OKguys In for the penny, lets just say facts are the most common problem here. Is it not an actual fact, that to recive any communicable information from , Wikipedia, the reviewer needs an electronic device. Lets now look at the truth of this, do we have a mobile phone that can be recharged, is it a standing alone home computer, if not you then look to any I pad , lap top , any of your wide ranging simple to use device that can connect to the internet. THIS IS & HAS ALREADY BEEN SHOWN TO EXIST IN THE REMOTEST PARTS OF THE KNOWN WORLD. WHY NOT COME UP WITH A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO THE ACCESS ALL PEOPLE HAVE TO Wikipedia.It woud'nt be a banking solution maybe. The intelligence says create an account that instantly charges any access to information on a global scale within the short moments of access. Herein lies the truth, all and any access to electronic information that is a public service,is a bonus to any society. Surely looking into the access is the answer. If Wikipedia is to remain in public hands & all access is to be the same for the next billion or so visitors, why not look into the 1 cent equivalent to each customer financially the same. 1 cent U.S. IS 1 CENT TO A PERSON IN THE UNITED STATES, why not globally through global access create a Wiki account that instantly charges through that customers access 1 cent. What is 1 cent to a CUBAN is therefore all that CUBAN is charged. The same the small world we live on all over. THE SIMPLICITY SOMEHOW ALWAYS BAFFLES THOSE WHO DON'T LISTEN TO THE FACTS. IN THIS WORLD WE HAVE BANKS. Why not use their global tech. All the customers that will in the future connect & ask themselves "look it up on wiki eh" must have a payable account to some company that is charging them somewhere or another to connect.1 cent is not such a terrible amount if it set to GDP of the area access is made. Not I suppose the immediate answer but worth the risk. The money generated from each account would be astronomical if we have a genuine inquisitive society but, by a wild guess the average American could use Wiki for 10 years & have all the info they could want, still only come to a few lousy dollars at 1 cent a connection.[reply]

213.105.178.33[edit]

Response by 213.105.178.33 11:56, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

213.105.178.33’s thoughts on question 1[edit]

  • A significant increase in the creation and expansion of Wikipedia articles in languages other than English
  • An effort to display a photograph, diagram or illustration on most Wikipedia articles
  • A merger of the Encyclopedia of Life with Wikispecies
  • Increased creation of audio files of Wikipedia articles so that people can listen to an article
  • Better accessibility to Wikimedia projects
  • More widespread use of Simple English Wikipedia.

213.105.178.33’s thoughts on question 2[edit]

“Healthy” Wikimedia projects would be regularly updated and visually attractive with the use of photographs, diagrams and/or illustrations. The layout of Wikimedia projects would be similar to what they look like today, save for perhaps some modernization of certain logos. High-contrast versions could be made.

109.110.169.77[edit]

Response by 109.110.169.77 12:09, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

نظر کاربر 109.110.169.77 در مورد پرسش ۱[edit]

تکنلوژی با سرعت زیادی در حال پیشرفت است ، بنظر من در سالهای اینده شکل ارتباط با دنیای دیجیتال متحول خواهد دستیارهای شخصی همانند کورتانا توانایی این را خواهند داشت که بتوانند مانند یک انسان فکر کنند و بهترین انتخاب ها را برای ما داشته باشند اینترنت هوشمنده شده و حالا میفهمد که ما در مکانی که هستیم به چیزی نیاز داریم ابزار ها ی واقعیت مجازی و افزوده نقش بیشتری در زندگی ما خواهند داشت.

Machine translation; please improve: We now realize that we have the Internet Hvshmndh and where we need to do virtual reality tools and have added a greater role in our lives.

نظر کاربر 109.110.169.77 در مورد پرسش ۲[edit]

ترتیب شدن کامل با موتورهای جستجوگر ، ایجاد نرم افزار های خلاقانه بر بستر موبایل و رایانه ها ترکیب شدن با دستیارهای صوتی مانند سیری ، کورتانا ایجاد مطالب و مقاله های اموزشی

Machine translation; please improve: Thus, complete with search engines, creating innovative software on the mobile platform and computers
Combined with Siri-like voice assistant, Cortana
Create training materials and paper


2.235.186.59[edit]

Response by 2.235.186.59

Considerazioni di 2.235.186.59 sulla domanda n. 1[edit]

Maggiore influenza o comunquee volontà dei governi di censurare (minime) parti di internet per quanto concerne alla politica.

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"Greater influence or comunquee will of governments to censor (minimum) parts of the internet with regard to politics."
I share your concern. We have taken a strong position on recent reports of government surveillance by the US and other countries, and I imagine our strategy will take that position into account. We must find solutions on the Internet that do not compromise unreasonably freedom of expression in the world. GeoffBrigham (WMF) (talk) 01:19, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Considerazioni di 2.235.186.59 sulla domanda n. 2[edit]

Una sezione notizie che includa sia attualità che scienza e tecnologia

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"A news section that includes both topical science and technology"


Walterroberts22[edit]

Response by Walterroberts22

Walterroberts22's thoughts on question 1[edit]

Sadly, the most visible future trend I see on the Internet is UNTRUTH. As an old man I have come to believe that the most important attribute of information -- any form of information – is its OBJECTIVE TRUTH. I really don't care whether the truth is inconvenient or uncomfortable to me personally or to any group to which I am a member. I only care that the information upon which I depend be OBJECTIVELY TRUE. Therefore, I can only suggest here that Wiki Contributors continue to maintain their individual high commitments to presenting the objective truth. I believe I can say without exaggeration that our Planet’s future may well depend on it.


Walterroberts22's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Future healthy Wiki projects must begin to QUESTION the collective knowledge and understanding which is currently available. When article conclusions fly in the face of basic logic or even common sense, dissenting opinions or alternatives must be more aggressively sought which could then complete those articles in a more objective fashion.

Hi Walterroberts22 - We really hear your message. Wikipedia is non-profit to help ensure objectiveness. Our community enforces policies to help ensure a neutral point of view - indeed the communities involved in that are pretty dedicated to writing Wikipedia objectively like an encyclopedia. I personally believe this will distinguish us on the internet where everything else (including information) is commercialized ... and for that reason, as you suggest, it must be part of our strategy. We also hope to encourage objective reporting by attracting more women editors and to ensure that the world's knowledge is compiled not only from our editors in the US and Europe, but also from other parts of the world, such as Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. Really appreciate your taking the time to share your views, which we will consider paramount as we work with everyone in crafting this strategy. GeoffBrigham (WMF) (talk) 01:12, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

218.94.132.84[edit]

Response by 218.94.132.84

218.94.132.84's thoughts on question 1[edit]

建立兴趣圈子、兴趣小组机制,把拥有共同兴趣点的高品质用户聚拢起来。积极开展众多的线下交流活动、定制品把维基百科打造成为一个拥有众多粉丝的明星品牌。维基百科网友见面会,网友野营、旅行聚会,带有维基百科大佬签字的维基百科纪念衫、纪念杯子、维基百科限量精装版图书、邀请学术领域顶尖专家与幸运网友共进晚餐。——维基百科的权威性、知识的广泛并不具有唯一性,例如,百度百科已经成为维基百科一个强有力的对手。我们只有把握时代的脉搏,与时俱进才能活出我们自己的风格。总之,想在中国打出市场一方面需要注重本土化,另一方面需要会炒作。

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"Build interest circles, interest groups mechanisms to share a common point of interest, high-quality user gather together. Actively carry out exchanges under many lines, fixed products Wikipedia build into a star brand has many fans. Wikipedia will meet friends, friends camping, travel party, Wikipedia commemorative T-shirt with a big brother signed Wikipedia, the Memorial Cup, Wikipedia limited edition hardcover books, invited leading experts in the academic field and lucky friends for dinner. - Wikipedia, the authority does not have extensive knowledge of the unique, for example, Baidu encyclopedia Wikipedia has become a strong opponent. We only grasp the pulse of the times, the times in order to live out our own style. In short, want to hit the market in China need to focus on the one hand, localization, on the other hand need to be speculation."

218.94.132.84's thoughts on question 2[edit]

1、引进等级激励机制,对于优秀的编辑人才,给予等级上的、头衔上的或者证书形式的荣誉奖励。 2、邀请学术专业领域人士、行业专家对各种条目进行指导和顾问,使之更具有权威性。 3、与微博大V、企业开展友好互利的合作。我认为不接受企业名义的赞助,不放置企业广告,不能代表需要拒绝一切与企业的合作。我觉得企业有可能会成为维基百科的助推器。

(Machine translation, please help improve...)
"1, introduce a grading system for editors with outstanding editing skills, give awards to them in the form of grades, prefixes, or certificates.
2, invite academic professionals and industry experts for guidance and consultancy on a variety of articles, to make it more authoritative.
3, develop friendly and mutually beneficial cooperation with micro blog authorized users and enterprises. I think that not accepting sponsorship from enterprises and not putting ads does not mean that refusing cooperation with any enterprises. I think the enterprises could become Wikipedia's booster."
User response: I would like to add my support to 218.94.132.84's ideas of creating more of a social sphere to make the community more tangible.
Consider how the internet was born in BBS, forums, and imageboards. Consider how social networks dominate the current web ecosystem. Human interaction is key for people's enjoyment and emotional bond with an organisation or product. I personally would love to have some kind of bulletin board or chat-based system (I LOVE the idea of interest groups).
I'm pretty sure this goes without saying, but I don't feel the ideas of selling products or making physical goods fit well with wikipedia's ethos. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gossfunkel (talk) 00:25, 3 March 2015‎ (UTC)[reply]

Filceolaire[edit]

Response by Filceolaire

Filceolaire's thoughts on question 1[edit]

The commodification of knowledge. A future where the only knowledge that gets taught is that which can be tested by a multiple choice question. Please not follow this trend. I am an active participant in wikidata but I am conscious that all the metadata in even the best wikidata page put together would barely make a stub article. Continue to develop wikidata and use it to fill infoboxes. Make sure the lead sections really are beginner level summaries of the articles. Make both of these available to others to reuse in varied formats but never forget that these are just appetisers for the main article.

A specific trend I can foresee is the collapse of the school textbook industry, replaced by CC-BY-SA licensed textbooks, compiled on wikiversity, based on wikipedia articles, with new editions reviewed and certified each year by a teams of educators appointed by the various ministries of education. This may take a little longer to happen in Texas.

Another thing I can foresee is "Voice references". WMF has already done work on this and must think of more ways to incorporate information for which there is not a traditional academic reference - first hand accounts of events by the people who were there, quick before they die - a 'Wiki loves grannies' project. This may have to be filtered through another project - Commons perhaps or maybe WikiNews - but it is, I believe, important work which the WMF may well be better placed to do than anyone else.

@Filceolaire: Regarding the point about lead sections, what do you think about a middle ground between the article descriptions from Wikidata, and the current lead sections, like a three sentence summary with a length limit? One challenge with the lead sections is that they tend to grow with the overall article length, and it's the kind of thing where it's hard to change existing habits -- but adding an additional type of summary might be a good idea for certain use cases.--Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 01:34, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Erik Moeller (WMF) Maybe but who is going to write them? Alternatively show the start of the lead with a "show more" link to display the rest of the lead. In a lot of cases the start of the lead does what you are asking.
Infoboxes based on WikiData may be more useful for languages other than English as they are much easier to translate into hundreds of languages. Filceolaire (talk) 01:18, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Filceolaire: Yes, that's a fair point re: lead; it's certainly what Google and others have been doing. If there's an understanding that the first X sentences/Y characters are used for summaries in various contexts, that may be sufficient to incentivize a little bit of rewriting where appropriate.
Re: infoboxes, yes, though I think there's also additional value in separating the data repository from the places where the data is used. You can keep adding useful properties to Wikidata without necessarily worrying that every piece of data is going to be useful to most readers -- and you can add or remove properties from display in infoboxes based on reader needs. In any case, I was positively surprised to see that infobox adoption is finally starting to happen in some of the larger wikis -- the Wikidata newsletter last week mentioned Reblochon as an example (I think they picked it so someone would make the obligatory "Who moved my cheese" reference, which I am hereby doing).--Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 01:33, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Filceolaire's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Thriving and healthy wikimedia projects will have their content reused in a thousand different formats with different skins available even to not logged in users, with portals promoted to act as the front page of specialised sections, with sites offering verified versions as school textbooks. Think of Open street maps. One set of data available through lots of different routes with corrections and additions steered back to the central repository and made available to all the other versions. We have the start of this with the Google graph reusing our info; in future there will be a load of other sites doing this just as many already use photos from Commons - Wikipedia as a public utility.

What is important is the quality of the information in the articles. Google has recently stated that they will start offering medical advice on search pages which has been checked for quality. This will be the holy grail in future, in my opinion - quality - and as other sites get corrupted by their need to kowtow to advertisers I believe that there is a real niche that wikipedia is poised to fill, supported by the other WMF sites. Many people complain about the quality of wikipedia but look at what they write. Mostly they are complaining that we are failing to live up to the high standards we set ourselves. Few are claiming that others do the job better.

@Filceolaire: Thanks, this is great input. Which of the many quality-related initiatives have you found the most promising? I'm very excited about the revision scoring as a service effort, which currently is focused on automatic, large-scale scoring of articles using algorithms, but which could potentially be extended in future to incorporate decentralized efforts by researchers and reviewers.--Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 01:28, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Erik Moeller (WMF) The good revisions are what improve quality. This scoring system is a way to detect bad revisions but doesn't help make more good revisions. The way to get good revisions is what we have always done - get the support of people who can make good revisions i.e. editors. Filceolaire (talk) 01:06, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Filceolaire: What would get the support of more people who could contribute high quality content? Over a five year horizon, are there things you feel WMF should prioritize very highly do to help do so?--Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 01:46, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Guy Macon[edit]

Response by Guy Macon

Guy Macon's thoughts on question 1[edit]

As background , I would call your attention to Page Weight Matters, by Chris Zacharias:

"Three years ago, while I was a web developer at YouTube, one of the senior engineers began a rant about the page weight of the video watch page being far too large. The page had ballooned to as high as 1.2MB and dozens of requests. This engineer openly vented that “if they can write an entire Quake clone in under 100KB, we have no excuse for this!” Given that I agreed with him and I was excited to find a new project, I decided to champion the cause of getting the YouTube watch page to weigh in under 100KB. On the shuttle home from San Bruno that night, I coded up a prototype. I decided to limit the functionality to just a basic masthead, the video player, five related videos, a sharing button, a flagging tool, and ten comments loaded in via AJAX. I code-named the project “Feather”.
"Even with such a limited set of features, the page was weighing in at 250KB. I dug into the code and realized that our optimization tools (i.e. Closure compilation) were unable to exclude code that was never actually used in the page itself (which would be an unfair expectation of any tool under the circumstances). The only way to reduce the code further was to optimize by hand the CSS, Javascript, and image sprites myself. After three painstaking days, I had arrived at a much leaner solution. It still was not under 100KB though. Having just finished writing the HTML5 video player, I decided to plug it in instead of the far heavier Flash player. Bam! 98KB and only 14 requests. I threaded the code with some basic monitoring and launched an opt-in to a fraction of our traffic.
"After a week of data collection, the numbers came back… and they were baffling. The average aggregate page latency under Feather had actually INCREASED. I had decreased the total page weight and number of requests to a tenth of what they were previously and somehow the numbers were showing that it was taking LONGER for videos to load on Feather. This could not be possible. Digging through the numbers more and after browser testing repeatedly, nothing made sense. I was just about to give up on the project, with my world view completely shattered, when my colleague discovered the answer: geography.
"When we plotted the data geographically and compared it to our total numbers broken out by region, there was a disproportionate increase in traffic from places like Southeast Asia, South America, Africa, and even remote regions of Siberia. Further investigation revealed that, in these places, the average page load time under Feather was over TWO MINUTES! This meant that a regular video page, at over a megabyte, was taking more than TWENTY MINUTES to load! This was the penalty incurred before the video stream even had a chance to show the first frame. Correspondingly, entire populations of people simply could not use YouTube because it took too long to see anything. Under Feather, despite it taking over two minutes to get to the first frame of video, watching a video actually became a real possibility. Over the week, word of Feather had spread in these areas and our numbers were completely skewed as a result. Large numbers of people who were previously unable to use YouTube before were suddenly able to.
"Through Feather, I learned a valuable lesson about the state of the Internet throughout the rest of the world. Many of us are fortunate to live in high bandwidth regions, but there are still large portions of the world that do not. By keeping your client side code small and lightweight, you can literally open your product up to new markets."

Source: [ http://blog.chriszacharias.com/page-weight-matters ]

(Emphasis added, capitalization in original.)

(Reproduced under fair use: "The first factor is regarding whether the use in question helps fulfill the intention of copyright law to stimulate creativity for the enrichment of the general public, or whether it aims to only 'supersede the objects' of the original for reasons of personal profit.")

In addition to the above, keeping our pages small and lightweight will have a significant impact on the energy we and our readers use and thus the amount of carbon we add to the atmosphere. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:03, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Guy Macon: Yes, we've been thinking a lot about this, and Ori, one of our principal engineers, has been a key driver of efforts in this area, including the recent migration to HHVM. We've got a lot more work already lined up to make Wikipedia faster for users around the world, and to truly make being mindful of site performance a part of the engineering DNA of the organization. Another worthwhile presentation on this subject, also from Google: Delivering the goods in under 1000ms.--Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 01:42, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Guy Macon's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Given the above, we need a project with the specific goal of serving pages with the fewest bytes and requests possible. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:03, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sinjoro Ajnulo[edit]

Sinjoro Ajnulo's thoughts on question 1[edit]

I think in the coming decade:

  • world will be more polarized and more mathematical than ever.
  • the number of active Wikipedia editors will increase.
  • the rate of increase of quality of content will remain same.
  • Wikipedia will survive.


Sinjoro Ajnulo's thoughts on question 2[edit]

I think Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that is:

  • free as in trying (although we all know yoda’s opinion on this.)
  • initiated by the right people.
  • edited by both people who should and shouldn’t edit.
  • merely a gift of the editors to the world.


I think Wikimedia movement may be interested in strategies for a better:

  • fundraising (I’ll skip)
  • better management/operating (I’ll skip)
  • better content (I could bite)


1. Grandma's badge

An apolitical way to gain and share knowledge constitutes a frame of reference on its own, which is required to define any “movement” (or motion) since there are no absolute frames of reference, which was Einstein's way of being apolitical I suspect. I suggest editors let their "apolitical" reference be approximately the most knowledge-deprived portion of Wikipedia's audience, and on that purpose, a "grandma's badge" could be awarded to the ones who have a stronger command on the living force, in the physical sense of course, in Latin if you want. I know quite a lot of people are badge freaks around here, but grandma's badge would be THE badge: "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother". You did triple major (preferably one soft plus two hard) in a platinum grade school, and have a verified IQ of 140? That’s quite alright, and it should not be too difficult for you to sympathize with the idea that editing Wikipedia is not a challenge to understand, it is a challenge to explain (although these two can be viewed as a bi-instability for editors).


I might also suggest that all baby editors learn to walk sufficiently well (or develop “x-ray vision”) before they learn directions (or play north & south, preferably on C64).

This is interesting - at first, this wasn't what I thought you meant by Grandma's badge (I thought you might be highlighting older contributors) but I see what you mean now. It's true that frequently we edit things that we can't explain clearly to grandma yet, though. For instance, I think of a user (Moonriddengirl), who frequently edits articles about jazz artists - not because she has special knowledge there but because we had a content hole that she identified and she enjoys the research. I wonder where those opportunistic editors would fall... could they hope to attain this badge? I know what you mean about badging being controversial, though, for sure. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:26, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Identifying content holes, doing research, and filling up the holes could definitely be awarded with a grandma's badge, if and only if (iff) the holes were filled with not only content but granma-digestible-content, in which case, by the way, it is quite possible that a real grandmother would like to give the badge (to Moonriddengirl :]) herself. Otherwise, I think the variety of badges, that do not necessarily pass granma's test, is quite impressive already.
This bi-conditionality introduced by logical iff, typically identified in (more) natural langauges by the phrase "necessary-and-sufficient", could be a clear-tell for any non-controversial badge, in my opinion. In fact, I'd encourage anybody to take it outside the context of badges, and apply it to pretty much every other context, except the onest that -somehow- involve un-conditional phenomena. Oh my, I already started feeling confused, see?! *sigh* :]
And most importantly, grandma's badge is not about "special" knowledge, it's about special story-telling:
"So, language does two things; number one, it enables to make descriptions, desciptions enable us to tell stories, and story telling and story understanding is what all of education is about. That's going up [number one]. And, going down [number two], it enables us to marshal the resources of our perceptual systems, and even command our perceptual systems to imagine things we've never seen."
- Patrick Winston, MIT 6.034 Artificial Intelligence, Fall 2010, [1. Introduction and Scope], 35m53s
I love the Winston quote. :-) And it's interesting to think about article writing in the context of storytelling. Thanks! I appreciate the push to think outside the box. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:24, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not moving? It should.

We don't care in which direction? We should.

We can't understand the direction? Nobody can.

We can't do anything? Anything but what we are doing.

Do heaven and earth move? Sure.

(Did Jupiter really sleep with his sister? \\/o/man, please!)


2. Wikipedia school of defensive arts: From inception to extraction no longer than a hundred years!

I have a sister, who is studying law in one of those eevee schools. She showed me a talk page the other day, and said "if you are looking for something, there is a good chance it is in the talk pages", although I suspect she said that because she knew me well. Frankly spoken, I have no idea why she was reading that article, or the editor chitchat about the subject matter. It is (probably) true that we share more than 45% (and less than 56%) of our genes, but it reminded me that I've never seen my father, and neither did she. After I read the section, I immediately thought about an improvement to Wikipedia: I remember somebody said something about forming a team for community engagement in one of below comments. I could suggest forming another specialized team to extract case-studies from talk pages to constitute a set of examples for interested editors, to illustrate the kind of editors that could help Wikipedia more effectively than others; don't worry, information in public domain can be modified freely; free as in freedom. Another reason not to worry is, as Lincoln said, "We cannot escape history".


I think Wikipedia doesn't need all kinds of editors. Let me make absolutely clear, if I can (this would be the time I wasn’t being neutral), that "neutrality" hasn't been found yet among fundamental forces of nature, and if it had been, that would not only be "big" but it could also perturb the concept of "mission", although I'd be perfectly comfortable with Wikipedia being mission-less. In fact, having a sense of fundamental neutrality at the moment of this writing would be even better; it would be like teaching a graduate level thermodynamics course, and talking about reversible processes as if you have seen one.


3. Public-in-contact rating

I saw somebody suggested public rating of articles. I also seem to remember the words twitter and youtube for some reason. I don't think public rating would work for "freedom" in Wikipedia scale, although a smart guy, who is living in somebody else’s shoes, could keep working on his mutating algorithm (or whatever). I think public wouldn’t give a "free" indicator. Perhaps a good-enough and easy to implement solution could be to involve editors' (non-editor) folks to rate articles; they are ‘public’ after all. Think of it like those human-computer interaction people hanging around with a prototype, letting people touch it and feel it you know, or like code-breaking challenges published publicly in gchq website, if you will. Of course, no editors should turn this into a community service; keep it to a dozen reviewer per editor, which would effectively enlarge the reviewer space by an order-of-magnitude. Knowing how to serve would be a critical requirement of community service, I imagine, although I’m fairly certain I don’t know how to do it properly.


4. Emphasis on cross-reivew: review of articles on hard-sciences by softies and vice-versa

I don’t know about articles on hard-sciences, but articles on social sciences quite often make me ask the question “is there a point in writing fifty billion pages if less than half will make sense?” I guess a philosopher could always have a statistician handy, although I always vote yes for people from maths, physics, EECS, and astro/aero disciplines.

Again, an interesting idea. I wonder what we could do to incentivize that type of soft peer-review? Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:26, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just storming (nothing necessarily viable):
  • Maintain (publish and update) a list that includes equal numbers of articles from both sides for cross-review, and specify a scheduling algorithm, and assessment criteria. Start with a few articles not to be daunting.
  • Multi-disciplinary editors who would volunteer
  • Departmentalize willing editors
  • Form a cross-review committee
  • Write a small cross-review tracking program
  • Sympathetic cross-reivew requests sent to most active and/or trusted editors (I know a lot of people would agree that cats are great visual aids for these purposes, "cute" is the word ahem)
  • you know what, cross-review badge ;]

WereSpielChequers[edit]

Response by WereSpielChequers

WereSpielChequers's thoughts on question 1[edit]

What major trends would you identify in addition to mobile and the next billion users?


  1. The greying of the pedia has been one of the biggest, possibly the biggest trends within the movement in recent years and may accelerate in future as we continue to lose the young to smartphones and other devices too small to edit on. The retired and those who've children have left home will continue to become the mainstay of our editing community as they have always been the backbone of most established mature voluntary organisations.
  2. Privacy is a big deal and we will have found a way not to publicly log IP addresses with edits. Instead we will have a code so that individual IPs can be blocked, but the blocking admin and anyone else who looks at the edits will know that the same IP made the same group of edits, but not be able to whoIS that IP address.
  3. We would be running an annual survey of editors to find out who the community are and what their concerns are. This would also be useful to measure trends such as the gendergap and the greying of the pedia.
  4. The biggest trend of the next few years will be the dropping of the language barriers online. Just as different speakers of Chinese might not understand what each other says but can understand each others writing so computerised translation will lower the barriers between us online. Wikipedia may even be a trend leader here as we import from the translation engines the terms that they have least confidence translating, and volunteers then go through the wiki adding hidden templates to differentiate between different meanings of set, bonnet, kind and other multi meaning words.
  5. One of the biggest trends of the 2020 and 30s will be the wikification of academia. As the generation who predate the wordprocessor retire so the convention will shift from giving further degrees for work that is notionally new to publishing the updated version of the last generation's work. the generation of academics who grew up with the wordprocessor will take the opportunity to have their names immortalised and their works continued for the foreseeable future, albeit with ever more versions and ever more credits for those who have done those updates. Awarding academic credit for editing wikipedia will be the norm rather than the exception.
  6. AIs will move from vandal fighting to fact checking/updating. Humans might compete to add a sports score or election result but AIs will be quicker and more thorough.
  7. Image search will be transformed by fuzzy matching and AI assistance, that will bring its own problems as we find our AIs linking the photo of someone's hand and face to the photo of the same hand and a naughtier part of the body. But we will find solutions to those problems and huge benefits from a categorisation tool that says "this picture of a ruined wall in an unknown location is probably a close up of this bit of this particular castle".

WereSpielChequers's thoughts on question 2[edit]

Thriving and healthy communities would:

  1. Look like a random sample of the world's intelligent altruists. Gay and Straight, Male and Female, Human and AI and for all of those every permutation in between.
  2. Be less snarky.
    Most of the edit conflicts that irritate people today would be resolved by picking off some of the lowest hanging fruit in the development backlog such as resolving a conflict between a categorisor or a template bomber and a newbie so that the newbies edit is no longer rejected.
    Edit warring would still happen, but edit warrers would get an automatic system message warning them before they save the edit that breaches 3RR. That won't stop all edit warring but it will take most of the heat out of it from goodfaith editors who don't appreciate being blocked without warning
    IP range blocking will have been replaced with smart IP range blocking there will still be loads of innocent editors caught by range blocks, but now they will only be caught if they use the same kit and operating system as whoever did the edits that earned the smart IP range block
  3. We will have regained the wisdom of crowds by bringing our subdivided crowds back together with Wikiquote, Wikipedia wiktionary et al as separate namespaces in one wiki. The Encyclopaedia, the dictionary, the newspaper and the book of quotes were products of the dead tree age. They would still be ways to view Wikimedia, but not the only way, or perhaps even the most popular way and certainly not the great divides they are now. Wikimedia will have one wiki per language and one multilingual wiki.
  4. Wikiprojects will be much more important not least because they will be operating over far more wikis without the deep silos of our thousand wikis, and increasingly across the language divides
  5. Most IT development will be prioritised by the community. The developers will still have control of security and capacity changes, but all other significant changes will be driven by community priorities. That won't stop problems such as the visual editor where the community wanted it, but the testers who said it wasn't ready were overruled; But it would reduce the tensions and waste of false starts like liquid threads, AFT, etc etc.
  6. The great divide in development philosophy within the WMF's IT dept will have been resolved. Instead of some developers writing to take advantage of the latest kit, and others writing as if they want every computer user to be able to edit wikipedia. All development will be done with a view to supporting the proverbial ten year old PC on a slow line.
  7. The extra billion need to have access to reliable sources especially about the places they come from and the history of their culture and community. One part of the digital divide between the West and much of the global south is the lack of accessible reference material. In some cases this can be addressed by the WMF funding the scanning and digitising of some of the sources that already exist but are not widely available.
Hi @WereSpielChequers: how do you see the integrated projects look like? When the user accesses one -- will they see them all? LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 01:54, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @LilaTretikov (WMF): to start with this would be an internal thing for the movement with one wiki and community per language, but each wiki having a name space for each of the various "traditional" products, so users would continue to use wikivoyage and Wikipedia as they do today. But once we have the opportunity to create a "wikimedia" view I predict people will design one. In one sense this is already being worked on talking to wikidata people they have ambitions to populate infoboxes. I think that as the range of screensizes increases we have an opprtunity to look at users with large screens as well as small ones. So just as mobile users get a slimmed down version of wikipedia so it would now be possible to serve an enrihed version of wikipedia to people with large display screens. We already show larger images but we could broaden that to so that a link to Wikimedia Commons auto included a minigallery that rotated through the category.
Regarding IP addresses and blocking, I agree the current situation is highly problematic. As you know, a lot of current auditing tools and processes rely on IP address lookups (cf. https://twitter.com/congressedits ), so if we hide IPs we would lose some transparency in favor of protecting user privacy. But it seems like the right tradeoff to me. Have you seen a robust community proposal around this?--Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 01:59, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Erik Moeller (WMF):, not yet, this is more a prediction of mine for where we will want to be in a few years time than a particular pet project I want to achieve. But I remember some discussion about this during the review of the privacy policy. I suspect we will need some intermediate process in between C/U and being completely open, perhaps allowing admins to access the full IP data for edits that look like spam. We could also have the mask for the IP address contain some Geo data such as country, US state or continent of IP. "Hawaii IP 132" would look more intrusive than a full IP address, but all this would tell you was that this was a further edit from the 132nd Hawaiian IP address to have edited a Wikimedia site. WereSpielChequers (talk) 23:43, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Erik Moeller (WMF): the entire infrastructure around IPs sucks(tm). We have no capability to "punch holes" in rangeblocks (i.e. block 192.168.0.0/16 but allow 192.168.11.12). This is specifically relevant for rangeblocks on hosting providers where the entire range is blocked for abuse, and we have no way to allow the good guys through anymore. We have no reasonable way to track contributions for a range. This is doubly relevant for IPv6 addresses where a domestic allocation is usually a /62 to a /48. We have no talkpages for such a range, which makes it difficult to communicate effectively. We can't see a block log for an address in a range. Autoblock doesn't work effectively if it's trivial to change address, and it doesn't target the entire relevant allocation. It's a mess. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:01, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Martijn Hoekstra: I've drafted a possible solution at en:User:WereSpielChequers/IP_and_OS_blocks, I'd be interested in your views on it. If the theory is true that many editors start off with a few IP edits then this could be one of the top half dozen reasons for the community going off the boil. WereSpielChequers (talk) 18:49, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Martijn Hoekstra and WereSpielChequers: FWIW, I agree we need to improve blocking tools and IP privacy. If either of you are up for helping with the organization of proposals around this, it would be great to get some of these improvement ideas logged in our bug tracking system, Phabricator, perhaps in a manner similar to phab:T86869 with various sub-ideas hanging off as dependencies.--Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 01:52, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Martijn Hoekstra and Erik Moeller (WMF): I'm very wary of getting further involved in phabricator, from what I've seen so far it is as problematic an environment for non programmers as Bugzilla was. There's also the issue that while these things are important, they aren't as important as reducing edit conflicts, and I don't see the point of asking the devs to do something that isn't as high a priority as that until they have time to do something as important for newbies as reducing edit conflicts. WereSpielChequers (talk) 15:10, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Gossfunkel: Socialisation, Wearables, and Outside the Wikimedia Sphere.[edit]

I'd like to start off by saying how excellent a move it is to encourage all members and users of Wikipedia to be involved with this next phase. Being user-run and user-made is so true to the Wikimedia ethos, and I'm glad this is sticking through the years.

With that in mind, I'd like to encourage everyone to think of their advances and ideas in ways that ensure this isn't corrupted. I hope others can take my ideas and refine them, especially in these areas.

I'd also like to back up other commenters speaking on the ideas of not over-complicating or adding useless, clunky features and bloatware. A Facebook like button on every page would be the sort of disaster I mean. With that said, here are my two (well, three) cents:

Answer to Question 1: Wearables[edit]

A simple point here. First Google (with Glass) and now Apple (with the iWatch) are approaching the wearables market. This has been a long time coming (and it's not quite here yet)- but it may well be the next generation that embraces it. It is essential that wikipedia is in the right place with these, as I don't think many of us would want another (proprietary) alternative to replace it, with a biased media perspective (rather than Wikipedia's peoples-own-encyclopedia style).

@Gossfunkel: What kind of Wikipedia experience would make sense to you on a watch or another wearable device?--Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Answer to Question 2: Socialisation[edit]

One of the great strengths in the web is the power to communicate directly. The internet brings people together. As a Twitter user and musician I feel one of the only ways I can breathe easily about not vanishing into obscurity is the power of the internet as a tool to expose and explore anyone and anything, anywhere.

This is what I want Wikimedia to embrace: the spirit of direct, un-obfuscated communication.

I know very few people who have never heard of wikipedia, but probably around the same number who have an account. It seems to be just a little to difficult to log in, or at least not worth it to the vast majority of users. We should work to subtlely encourage people to participate by streaming the process- many sites do this by using Facebook or Google's login APIs to share accounts between sites. Google would be an incredible partner to work with, though obviously this would be a majorly political move.

If we could mirror some of the features Google have implemented in Docs (now Drive), with their real-time editing and chat framework, I think that Wikipedia could become a powerful social space for those who are passionate about information. Edit wars could take on a far more conversational aspect, and there would be a greater likelihood of coming to a conclusion or comprimise if it were easy to discuss at length without cluttering archives. The ability to 'sticky' chats (maybe through some kind of voting system?) would be a great way to get important meta-information to be clear.

I feel that this would be possibly the only time Wikipedia could use web 2.0 ideas without it being a silly, tacked-on accessory. If the editing became more of a filter through which one sees the page, with a chat pseudo-window in a corner, and user's editing cursors in colour displayed, it would become a much more live experience. My fear is that most people see Wikipedia as this existing thing they cannot interact with- though it is editable, they don't see it as a thing someone like them could or should do. AJAX programming like this may increase server load, though the vastly increased dedication and /passion/ this would incite would (I confidently estimate) mean people would actively want to pay this back in no time.

@Gossfunkel: Thanks for your comments! I agree there's a lot of potential in more real-time engagement. What makes it a fair bit more complex for us is that, unlike most Google Docs, you can have arbitrary people editing a wiki article at any given time, so there's more of a concern around vandalism/bad edits. That said, we've done some initial thinking around how this could work in our context. I showed some early designs for this at Wikimania last year -- see video -- and we hope to pick this up once we've got the new rich-text editor in good shape.---Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 02:05, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Outside the Wikimedia Sphere[edit]

This is a very difficult thing to address, because it's very easy to get wrong. Widgets, embeddables and the like have long since been the bane of simplistic web designers, as users clutter every available space with 100 unnecessary flash applets and reduntant buttons. However, as I touched on earlier, part of the power of Facebook, Twitter and Google is how they have become the gatekeepers to many other sites through their login engines.

Wikipedia is to knowledge and information as Facebook is to socialising. Or it should be. But the thing is that social media is found across the web, with people linking everyone to their page, or sharing tweets with twitter's excellent tweet embedding system that slots so well into many online articles and posts. There isn't really an equivalent with wikipedia (other than the good old fashioned hyperlink), largely- I believe- due to how unnecessary embedding a wikipedia page would be. However, I don't feel this is the angle at which we should approach this. I don't know what the right angle /is/, but I feel this is an area we should be contemplating and discussing.