User:John Carter/Opinions

This is, basically, one old fart’s opinions regarding the Wikimedia Foundation’s projects, with particular attention to the English wikipedia project, specifically where and why it is not particularly successful and a few ideas which might, maybe, be able to improve some things a little.

Characteristics of editors

To start this, I think it not unreasonable to point out a few areas where wikipedia and Wikimedia editors display characteristics which, while understandable, don’t actually help the project entities that much. I am putting this rather lengthy piece together in the hope that, perhaps, it serves as the basis for some discussion, both on the matters I specifically discuss and potentially others as well, perhaps here or elsewhere.

First, we should note that being interested enough in a topic to try to develop content related to it does not even remotely necessarily mean that one is necessarily really capable or competent to develop such content. Speaking personally, I have a rather wide range of interests, including the cultural history of most of the world, with particular attention to religious or other belief systems which can and do serve as much of the basis for the cultural institutions of the relevant social groups and societies. That does not mean, however, that I am actually generally capable or competent to do so. I am personally aware of any number of belief systems which I can find little if any really current reliable sources on. That lack of available sources renders me functionally incompetent or incapable of developing such content. I imagine that there are a number of other editors who have basically found the same to be true regarding some of their areas of interest. There is of course another problem, that many of us experience from time to time, regarding our being perhaps too personally interested in a given topic to really be able to place existing policies and guidelines before our own views. This latter can, not unreasonably, come into play when dealing with some particular details or lesser-known subtopics of some larger topic which might attract little attention from editors involved in the larger topic.

Second, in the English wikipedia we currently have somewhere over 4 million extant articles. To any newcomer, or even experienced editor not already familiar with much of the directly related existing content on any topic which wikipedia might already have, it can be some real work to try to find what related topics do and do not yet have substantial content, where that content might be, and what if any sources might be available to help such editors determine matters of notability, weight, and such. Many people would not be willing to engage in such work, and that,at least potentially, leads us to losing some of those editors.

Thirdly, it is probably the case that in most cases the more tightly focused an article topic is, the easier and quicker it is to be able to bring to a good, basic level of quality. That situation tends to lead to a situation we rather often encounter here. We already have a good number of tightly focused articles, such as, for instance, articles on individual Catholic churches, while we sometimes have little or anything on related broader topics, like the dioceses or archdioceses in which such churches exist, or the history of the church body in the city, state, or country in which individual churches lie. And, of course, particularly for articles on such broader topics, trying to determine matters of WEIGHT is a very real and serious concern which isn‘t always easy to address. Lastly, particularly in areas in which we may not have many editors, the lack of easy accessibility to good sources on these topic areas is another problem. Many comic books and works of children’s/young adult literature get little attention in a lot of sources on literature, and only a few readily available reviews in periodicals that offer them. So, in at least a few topic areas, it can be hard to find much of the forest of material on the broader topic for all the trees of articles on narrower topic areas.

A fourth problem is the somewhat specific matter of how much content on any given narrower topic to place in what is sometimes a wide variety of articles relating to that topic. So, for instance, which content relating to the Battle of Siffin, the dispute which led to the death of Ali and the differentiation of the Shiites and Sunni Muslims, should be placed in the main article on the battle itself, the articles on the individuals involved, the articles on the “History of” Islam in general and of the Shiites and Sunnis in particular, articles on the history of the relevant locations, and so on. For several topics already covered in multiple articles, it can be and at this point very often is a good deal of effort to deal with such matters. Again, many individuals would not be so interested in making such an effort, and may wind up leaving the project.

A fifth area of concern is how to deal with the sometimes overwhelming numbers of diverse opinions on a topic of some degree of importance to multiple groups. So, for instance, according to at least one report, there are today thought to be some 20,000 (yes, ‘’twenty thousand‘’) different Christian groups or denominations in the world. I think that number probably includes most if not all of the individual “non-denominational” churches as separate groups or denominations. It is however almost certainly the case that many of them probably haven’t taken any particularly firm positions on some of the broad doctrinal or social topics related to Christian theology and ethics, but that still leaves a question regarding how to deal with those groups that do. This can be a particular problem when dealing with WEIGHT issues regarding the relative degree of influence and social impact that large bodies like the Catholic Church (which has a significant history of about 2000 years and whose membership includes roughly 1/6 of the existing world population) and some local megachurch, which might have only existed for a few decades with perhaps maybe tens of thousands of members over the years.

Many, possibly most, of the concerns raised above relate to, well, commitment. Commitment to developing a given article or group of articles by individual editors with the wherewithal to do a decent job of it, commitment on the part of other editors to review and critique it, and in some cases find other sources not available to the first group, and also, in a lot of cases, commitment by yet another group of editors to keep up articles that were developed by editors who have either subsequently left the project or stopped working on given topic areas. Particularly important in this regard are articles relating to living people or more or less ongoing topics, particularly if a given individual or topic stops receiving the degree of broader media attention it had previously received in those fields. The amount of time involved in all these tasks, and the effort required to undertake a lot of them, is pretty high.

So, by my count, that is maybe six major areas of concern that need to be met regarding articles in the English wikipedia. How would it be possible to deal with all of them in the most productive, and least unnecessarily time- and labor-intensive, ways?

Well, personally, I’ve been thinking about that for a few months now. What follows is a rather longish list of some things which might be doable in the wikipedia and various related entities.

Ways to reduce the impact of these reasonable characteristics

1) Better outlines of topical content - It would very definitely be in our interests to somehow provide newer editors of some ideas of what sources are available for content in a given area, and what topics are significant within that area. Existing reference books are among the better indicators of what are the major topics within the subject area of those reference books. Beyond that, providing some indicators of what periodicals deal regularly with a given subject area would help as well, as they would give editors newer to a specific subject area what subjects are receiving attention in that area. Granted, some huge topic areas, like the visual arts, philosophy and religion, have countless reference books and periodicals devoted to their topics, but in many of those cases there are already separate groups relating to subtopics, and between the existing WikiProjects and work groups the lists could be made significantly shorter.

2) Outline pages - At this point, there have been pretty much only minimal efforts made to develop topic outline pages in a lot of areas. A bit more devoted work to those outlines would be very useful as well.

3) More development of subarticles - The above is a rather serious problem. To deal with it effectively would more or less require that we have all the significant related topics relating to any particular subject known and, probably, at a sufficient level of development to effectively indicate the probable scope of the individual related articles. In many cases, these relevant subarticles are not yet extant or indicated, and that can frequently be problematic.

3B) This problem is probably particularly troubling regarding topics which have a wide variety of recognized, somewhat official views. The estimated 20,000 extant possible variations on matters relating to Christian thought comes to mind. Even with all due effort and attention, it may well be and probably is the case that not all the variant opinions on some aspect of Christian thought can be addressed, particularly in those instances when there may not exist independent reliable sources to establish the amount of support a given belief might have, or, possibly, that the beliefs have any real currency in the Christian world at all.

4) Clearer indicators of possible "steps" to completion - The only ways I can see effectively addressing the problem of individuals not being willing to make the sometimes serious commitment of time and effort which is implicit in any effort regarding some serious development in some areas, a characteristic which might be a bigger factor with some of our sister entities, is to somehow try to create a way to break up the sometimes overwhelming tasks of writing a book, proofreading a long book, or other similar daunting tasks is to try to figure out some way to break those tasks into more achievable tasks.

General proposals

1) A community portal common to all sister projects - I very much believe it would be in our interests to have some sort of “Community Portal” with material relating to all the various sibling projects transcluded in all the entities, and with luck included in the sidebar menu. I think a lot of editors don't think of, or even know, much about the sister entities, and that probably helps keep some editors from getting involved in them. It would also make it easier for some of the sister projects to maybe make some sort of group collaboration across sister projects regarding a specific topic. Maybe this could be done in a way similar to most of the wikipedia portals, with perhaps people from the individual sister projects doing a regular, maybe monthly, update to a transcluded section of material included in the similar or identical portals in all the sister projects.

2) Signpost-type newsletter dealing with all the sister projects - Some sort of greater community newsletter, something along the lines of the Wikipedia Signpost, providing information on not only wikipedia, but also the other English language projects, and maybe the Simple English projects as well.

3) More detailed priority assessment for outline purposes - Regarding the occasional question above about the difficulty of determining which article to place particular content in, maybe developing a more detailed assessment system, ranking articles not so much from “importance” or “priority”, but maybe in a more clearly “outline” structure, possibly with numbers, and maybe up to 10 or more different outline assessment grades, might make it easier to both determine which articles should have how much relevant content, but also which articles of significant importance to such an “outline” format do and don’t yet exist. If there are recent well-regarded reference sources, particularly of an encyclopedic format, relating to individual topic areas, they might be particularly useful in such matters.

3A) Implicit in the above is an indicator that it would be useful to have a good, clear idea of what recent reference works have on a given topic area, and the relative amount of weight they give the various related topics. I have started to get together a few such lists in Category:WikiProject lists of encyclopedic articles, and if anyone is interested in making similar lists for other topics or reference works not yet included, I would at least encourage them to do so.

4) More articles and other materials relating to reference works in topic areas - More or less relating to the above point, it would also be I think very useful if editors interested in a particular topic area maybe gave a bit more attention to developing content relating to the reference works themselves. Several reference works, including encyclopedias, have been reviewed by other experts in the topics, often in relevant journals, indicating which articles are most reliable and which are, well, less so. I don’t know if we have any sort of clear indicators yet regarding how to structure articles on such reference works, but I think having some sort of rough guidelines available for such articles would be useful in maybe making it easier for editors to develop such articles on reference works.

5) Less active WikiProjects stimulate activity by development of content in sister entities - We have a number of WikiProjects devoted to topics which were once “current,” but have since become somewhat dated. Several such WikiProjects, relating to cancelled TV shows, dissolved or retired music acts, and other similar topics have become in many cases moribund. It might not be possible to get all the editors involved in such a WikiProject when the topic was then “current” to continue to be interested in a topic after it stops being current, but one way which might work might be to try to get the content on such a topic organized for a single broad “work” on the topic at Wikibooks or Wikiversity. Maybe.

6) Lists of relevant reference works and periodicals for WikiProjects - This idea is, admittedly, a bit of a pipe-dream, given the amount of effort it would take to develop such material. But I think it is probably reasonable to assume that a lot of editors who have some interest in a topic, enough to spend some time in trying to develop content, were able to consult lists of reference works or periodicals meeting standards for RS and NOT with content relating to those topics. But, given the staggering number of journals in some topic areas, as well as all the newspapers and other media outlets out there, it would be a great deal of effort to get them developed. It would probably still be a good idea however.

7) Development of independent expert, or professional, review projects - Even if all the above were done, however, there would still exist a number of topics where the RS present some sort of “he said, she said” coverage of topics. Areas of particular concern in this regard would probably include subjects which are subject to different views from different social, political, philosophical, and religious groups, areas of contentious history, and some matters relating to pseudoscience or dubious science which might get a bit too much coverage or be promotion in some sources for dubious reasons. There has recently been an effort to create an independent review board of qualified professionals in the medical field to review some articles relating to medicine to ensure that they receive really expert review, and it would probably be a good idea if similar groups could be established in many or most of the areas like those above which frequently receive such contentious or somewhat problematic coverage.

8) Signpost "forums" as a way of developing contentious topics - I would love to see the Signpost develop some sort of regular “forum” section, which might in any given issue focus on either some specific ideas for adaptation in the Foundation entities, or even some specific discussions between editors on different sides of matters of disagreement, either in the “real world” or perhaps regarding policies or guidelines. I remember in the now somewhat distant past, there was at least one such recurring piece which included discussion on matters which science and what might broadly be called pseudoscience or the occult presented their views on specific matters. Some regular “forums” for such discussion, in the Signpost or elsewhere, which might allow for focused discussion on such contentious issues, might be one of the better ways to develop material for WikiBooks or maybe some other entity for works similar to the Greenhaven “at issue” series of books, and it may well be that much of the content on such topics would be more suited for some sister entity. I have contacted one editor who has an interest in matters related to homosexuality and society, who has a rather different view on the topic than myself, to maybe help me get together such a text on the issues regarding homosexuality and the modern world. If that proves successful, and I don’t know if it will, it might also serve as a bit of a basis for determining how to do similar texts in the future.

9) Development of Wikipe-tan family - Not really a hugely high priority, but it probably would be a good idea to have Wikipe-tan have some sibling mascots available for all the WF entities. It might be a good idea if one or two of them were male, of course. We do have to consider the potential of future generations of such mascots somewhere down the line, of course, and that tends to be one area in which men can be singularly useful. As suggestions, maybe Commons might have a youngish male carryi9ng some sort of television camera, and WikiSource, which is more or less a library, might have a mascot reminiscent of maybe Buffy’s friend Miles the librarian, or, maybe, Rex Libris from “I, Librarian”.

10) "Fun" content, like maybe a comic strip - One particular way all such mascots might be useful is if we could somehow create a way to package some content in a more “fun” manner. There was an old WikiWorld comic strip, which tended to be based on the humorous content of wikipedia articles. Unfortunately, admittedly, humor isn’t in general one of the most obvious aspects of purely encyclopedic content. But using the various entity mascot’s as a form of “Jimbo’s Angels” who might be able to liven up a comic strip with humorous material either from or directly relating to content of one or more WF entities might lighten some things up around here, and maybe draw some more attention to such content. Perhaps some sort of storylines roughly along the lines of the Carmen Sandiego thefts, or similar nefarious activities, might work. Also, we possibly probably could have some appearance by various recognizable public domain characters, like Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, ERB’s John Carter (yeah, I had to stick that one in), could generate some fun strips as well. If we had someone who would be interested in drawing it, of course. I suppose it might be possible to have the humor of the strip similar to that occasionally seen in Pearls Before Swine, an existing comic strip which also, occasionally, features characters first seen elsewhere. So, for example, one strip showing a group of goggle-eyed women, all carrying cameras, unloading from a tour bus, with a sign indicating the nearness of the Cerne Abbas Giant, with some disgruntled looking men carrying picket signs to the effect of “Just Say No to unrealistic expectations,” “Bigger Isn’t Always Better,” and the like might be an example of what might be doable.

Wikimedia Foundation Projects in General

1) Cross-project efforts to identify and develop "core" content fields - For pretty much all the Foundation entities, it would probably be possible to construct some sort of list or grouping of topics which would be similar to the WP:1.0 list of the “core topics” for that entity. Maybe, possibly after developing the portal and house journals mentioned above, it might be possible to make some serious efforts to get involvement from all editors, including those who haven’t yet been particularly active in a given project, for their input. It might also increase the number of editors willing to work on developing content on those topics in a given entity as well.

2) Cross-project "Wiki"Projects - It might help to make an effort to develop groups similar to WikiProjects which try to develop content relating to their given topic across sister entity boundaries. Item #6 in the above section is one way in which such groups active across entity boundaries might be better able to both keep editors active and develop content.

3) Somehow, increase the ranking of sister project content in search engines - We very much need to find some ways to not only get more attention from our editors to some of our sister projects, We have for some years had various articles in wikipedia which are of perhaps questionable “encyclopedic” value or content because the material is significant to at least some topics and wikipedia is still the most visible location we have. If we could somehow increase significantly the appearance of some of our sister projects in search engines, we might have fewer problems with such dubiously placed content in the future. Anyone have any ideas regarding how to do that?

4) For Wikinews, some "forums" to use to develop "column" type content - For Wikinews, whether content of the “WikiDomestic” type proposed above is included there or not, maybe having some “forums” for discussion and eventual preparation of content in the News would be possible. One such group of forums might be more or less of a radio talk show format, with broad discussion of topics, and another might be something like a wire service, for preparation of possible “This Month in (X)” columns relating to, possibly in the early stages, music, TV/movies/video, sports, comics, and other topics which get a lot of attention on the internet but which might not get as much at WF entities at present. If successful, they might serve as a way to develop similarly effective columns relating to local, regional, and national news, including political affairs, in the future.

5) WikiFiction. It is a strange idea, and it might best be incorporated in WikiBooks or WikiVersity, but I think one thing which might help draw some more readers and editors is if we developed some fiction similar to the Flashman novels or the Young Indiana Jones TV show, which might present historically accurate information on major topics in a, hopefully, more entertaining format. Larry Gonick’s books, and similar works by others, might be used as some sort of models for such content as well.

6) WikiYou. The Self-help content entity. There is a lot of such material out there, much of it of possible use to readers, which might not really be that appropriate to existing WF entities. Maybe. Alternately, this might work as one of a group of “columns” in WikiNews, which might, potentially, later be collected into some sort of book form.

7) WikiBio. The Living history project. Could perhaps be included in Commons, but some sort of conscious attempt to gather “living history” type material for the future might be useful. There are several such efforts ongoing in the real world, and maybe we might be able to host some such material, under some guidelines, here. This, also, might work as a regular “column” in WikiNews.

8) WikiRadio. We do have some spoken word content already, often focused for the visually disabled, but I think we might well be able to do more to make available to some people things like old public domain plays and other works. It might even be possible to get some Meetups to make arrangements with local schools, particularly performing arts schools, museums or libraries or maybe even radio stations to put together such performances. I tend to think that such would likely get a fair amount of local media attention in many cases, and I don’t think such attention would necessarily be damaging. Such audio files could easily be added to Commons.

9) WikiDay. “This Day in History,“ “Daily Devotions,“ “Joke of the Day”, etc., type material. I don’t know of any WF entity which currently would be a good host for such pages, but tend to think they might wind up being popular and maybe thus being useful to readers and editors in ways other entities might not be. Again, this might work as a regular feature in some sort of WikiNews regular “paper,” maybe some sort of WikiWeekly.

10) WikiWork - There is also a lot of material which would be potentially useful regarding materials directly relating to given professions/fields of labor, “do-it-yourself” type projects, etc. I suppose a few columns in WikiNews might be a starting point for such material, but the amount of possible material and amount of possible interest might be enough to consider some sort of separate, more dedicated, location. Again, this might also work as a “column” in WikiNews.

11) WikiHere. - I tend to think a lot of our editors are, not surprisingly, from areas with big populations. Wikia might already have some such sites available, but for some areas, particularly huge areas like London, Los Angeles, and New York, it might well be that having some sort of location dedicated to local history and events might be useful. Such a central location might also be very useful to local history societies and museums. I suppose WikiNews, WikiBooks, and WikiVersity might serve for these purposes as well. Certainly, a “This Month in” a given city or region or even country column in WikiNews would be at least potentially an option.

Other Proposals for WF entities in general

1) "Women's magazine" type content - One of the things which has gotten a good deal of attention in recent years is the comparatively lesser involvement of women and minorities in WF entities. It might be possible and useful to create some sort of WikiDomestic on which to develop content relating to some matters which are often found most frequently discussed in what are called women’s magazines, particularly relating to cooking, home décor, fashion, childrearing, and the like. Alternately, it might be possible for perhaps WikiNews or some other entity to develop message boards for such matters, maybe with a few specific topics on such boards given focused attention for a given period, and using the material gathered in such in developing material for “columns” in WikiNews. So, for instance, there might be some focus on various ways to prepare meat loaf and what foods to accompany it with for a given meal, maybe even with differences for casual at-home meals, entertaining friends, and more formal gatherings. Any opinions?

2) Commentaries on religious texts - Having dealt with a lot of content relating to various religions, I know that there is a ton of material out there which serves as some sort of commentary or exposition on sacred texts. The sheer amount of such material written over the years on the books of the Jewish/Christian Bible from a variety of religious and academic views is maybe the biggest such grouping. Maybe, somehow, getting some editors to work on “commentary” texts for maybe WikiBooks or WikiVersity on such sacred texts and exposition and theological discussion of them, either from a religion-specific or ecumenical perspective, might be one of the best ways for us to package such materials. This could be started in some sort of WikiNews format for later collection elsewhere.

3) "Annontated" Books - Similarly, I know (and in some cases read devoutly) such works as the “Annotated Dracula”, “Annotated Alice” and “Annotated Sherlock Holmes” which are similarly organized for commentary on other, non-religious works. I can easily imagine WikiBooks or WikiVersity developing a number of such works here. They would need the full text of the original work, which might be developed at WikiSource, with the addition of the notes or commentary elsewhere. Alternately, commentary might be prepared separately, in some sort of Cliffs Notes-type format.

Proposals Specifically for WikiSource, possibly of some relevance to others as well

1) If there might be any way to do a cross-entity category, Category: Public domain texts available at commons would be really useful for WikiSource editors to find readily available texts.

2) "Popular Pages" for sister projects - If we could agree on a point ranking system, it might be possible to get a bot to generate a list similar to the “Popular Pages” listing of several wikipedia WikiProjects for the WS community portal which lists and provides links to indexes closest to completion, both in raw numbers and as a percentage of the text as a whole.

3) Possible changes to the Wikisource community portal - Potential inclusion of new material in the community portal, to perhaps include something relating to the bot proposal above, for works in general and also possibly a similar separate listing for NARA works. The latter is one of the unique aspects of WikiSource among such sites, and it certainly might be useful to maybe draw a bit more attention to it in this way.

4) One-Page-a-Day Club for WikiSource. Such bots as mentioned above might help give an editor who would be willing to spend only a few minutes a day to really contribute, and, potentially, if there were enough of them, to complete some works which might be way too long for any individual to accomplish successfully. It might also provide a comparatively easy way for newer editors to start there. Particularly for wikisource, and maybe some of the other projects, I think the question of commitment, whether a given editor is really ready, willing, and able, to complete a work often more or less unassisted may well be one of the bigger disincentives to contributing. Something like this might help get other editors involved in individual works. If we had around one thousand editors involved in such efforts (I can dream, can’t I?) we might be able to finish even the whole of Encyclopedia Britannica from start in about two months.

5) New "wikified" page status? - If the above does happen, it might be reasonable to perhaps create a different level of page completion, maybe “wikified” or something similar, which might ensure that appropriate links to other pages are included, and, maybe, that the work as a whole is included in one or more WS portals.

6) Bot indicating potential new wikipedia articles based on wikisource - For those topics which might have multiple works available on a wikiSource portal but not yet an article in wikipedia, it might be useful to have some sort of bot generate a list of such portals for use in article development.