Videowiki Presentation at Wikimania 2018

VideoWiki is a free multi-media encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The goal of VideoWiki is to visualize Wikipedia, the sum of all human knowledge.

Introduction

Videos as it adds a new dimension to learning, and I built VideoWiki for a similar reason. “Being born in the YouTube age, the way  I consume most of my information is through videos. I always wondered why there isn’t a video version of Wikipedia already? We can watch 4K videos on YouTube but Wikipedia is still a text-based encyclopedia.

So I stumbled upon an interview of Jimmy Wales. At the end of the interview, the reporter excitedly asked Jimmy Wales, “what is the future of Wikipedia?, are we going to see a video version of Wikipedia?” Jimmy Wales replied by immediately saying “No , we are not moving in that direction because building a collaborative multi-media encyclopedia is not possible”.

Challenges

There are many challenges in building a multi-media encyclopedia such as collaboratively editing a video is difficult, in-line citations, etc., but the biggest challenge is the fact that post-publishing editing is not possible, i.e., in other words, video files are not re-usable.

Knowledge is never static. It keeps on updating. Every time there is some new information for a particular topic, the topic's Wikipedia article can be easily updated. However, how do you update a video file? Even on YouTube, the biggest video platform, you can only create a new video file to present the new information, and you cannot edit or re-use your existing video file on that topic. Therefore, if you had made a video on Elon Musk which said that he has started 3 companies, and tomorrow there is news that he has just a new venture, then your old video file becomes redundant.

This is why we cannot use YouTube to build a multi-media encyclopedia. YouTube works on a 100 to 100 Model, i.e, YouTube’s model allows 100 people to upload 100 different files while for a given topic while Wikipedia allows 100 people to come together to work on a single file.

There are other video editing tools in the market such as Simplishow, Howtoons, VideoScribe, etc; however, they face the same limitation that the post-publishing editing is not possible.An example to demonstrate this point will be the above image which is a screenshot of an Osmosis video. The image says that the ratio of Bacteria to Human cells in our body is 10 to 1. However, as per the latest research, the ratio is 1 is to 1. Since the video is already uploaded, this particular frame cannot be immediately edited and corrected.

Another video editing tool that requires a mention would be Mozilla Popcorn Maker. The software is a web-based video editor developed by Mozilla to collaboratively edit videos; however, it is not defunct. The biggest limitation of Mozilla Popcorn Maker is that it has a high learning curve. It has a Timeline feature which is common with all video editors. However, when your mission is to allow anyone to edit the sum of all human knowledge, and you keep a high learning curve for creating videos, it defeats the purpose of your mission.

VideoWiki Demo

At VideoWiki, just search for your favorite article, click on "convert it to VideoWiki" to create a VideoWiki article for your topic. Click on the edit button to edit the VideoWiki article. Video editing in VideoWiki is so easy that it passes the mom's test. My mom, a non-tech savy person, has edited a VideoWiki article. You simply have drag and drop images, gifs or videos to the relevant text and you are done.

In VideoWiki, there is an auto-update bot that automatically syncs with the Wikipedia article. Therefore, if a Wikipedia article updates, the VideoWiki articles updates too, allowing uers to edit the article post-publishing of a video file.There are many other benefits of VideoWiki such as Inline-citations, collaboratively editing a video file, simple drag and drop user interface, etc.

What's unique about VideoWiki

VideoWiki has a fundamentally different approach of building a multi-media encyclopedia. It breaks down an encyclopedia into three different layers: Text, Speech and Visual Layer. This modular approach makes VideoWiki possible.

Support

VideoWiki is just starting out. We are working looking forward to develop features such as Wikimedia Commons integration to use open-images instead of out current setup where er use Bing Image API to show both open and non-open images. If you too want to visualize the sum of all human knowledge, please join us and support making VideoWiki a sister project.

Fun Fact

VideoWiki will be made available in18 different languages, including all the top 10 Wikipedia languages.