Wikipedia talk:Wikimedia Strategy 2017/Cycle 2/A Truly Global Movement

What impact would we have on the world if we follow this theme?

We would be able to accelerate the development and coverage of areas on Wikipedia greatly deprived of such coverage, for example certain areas in geography and history in parts of Asia and Africa. SUM1 (talk) 18:57, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

If we utilize a possitive movement people will join in as the norm of stepping in one another is only focused today as a basic instincts of survival of the fittest. If we change those ways today, the future will remember us as the time we became ready and the heavens opened up to us jointly both religions and science acknowledged unified common purpose to be citizens of the heavens respecting not only one another but striving in complement the movement with jointly efforts to produce profits in helping one another as philanthropy actions will relise founds already awaiting reasoning to put for use. Then present the movement to UNESCO who will invest in the light that shine us in the Cosmos. Wethepeople2017 (talk) 04:17, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

We need desalination plants like Redbox in Africa. Churches from all religions from around the world could be put to be the administrators and see which would produce what they preach. The founds to start the movement are already in bank reserves from donations from mayor wealth entrepreneurs that gave mostly their fortunes to philanthropy. Wethepeople2017 (talk) 04:27, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Wethepeople2017: desalination plants? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 14:18, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I am living in China And now china is encouraging the Belt And Road (一带一路) -- the ancient business road from East Asia to Western world China established the AIIB (Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank 亚洲基础设施投资银行) and invest about 50 million RMB in world-wide country investment -- refer to many fields such as communication, cross-cultural research, business, banking, etc. the most important topic is that China want to global collaboration with more countries. the developing country still have potential to encourage their passion to involve in global development. Now the belt and road Forum is exhibited in Beijing I hope in future The Belt and Road will actually being useful in Globalization.(talk) 13:57, 15 May 2017 (BJT)

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, so most people search for articles in here, and if those article that they're searching is not covered yet that means that wikipedia has to cover those articles quickly so they can have the articles they need. So, this strategy is definitely going to make a huge impact on the society. Kent961 (talk) 11:29, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

This idea will generate a hope of true success and also making the knowledge reach everyone in the real manner which according to me will make Wiki worth its actual mean and thus making the knowledge reach the people who need to know about it as I have observed that people search for wiki to just make a difference on their writing style and also they know most of it. I am an Indian and have seen the lack of knowledge in people and simultaneously the access of it too. Thus by this Wikipedia can make a big difference in the world and in the development of WHOLE WORLD too. Sanjana chauhan (talk) 05:02, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

• We would strengthen global culture and cultural exchange as well as distribute knowledge to knowledge-underprovided areas / developing countries where it can be very useful as well as incorporate the diverse cultural backgrounds, memories, views, experience and knowledge as well as covering local issues & objects. We could also foster the idea of openness and collaboration in areas where that can be especially impactful. --Fixuture (talk) 19:54, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

How important is this theme relative to the other 4 themes? Why?

This should be the least priority -- "Few respondents... could accurately describe what Wikipedia was." ... "Other than expert respondents, virtually no one seemed aware of Wikipedia’s mission" "People confuse Wikipedia with a search engine or social media platform." Same goes for India. Wikipedia needs more (l)users who think it is a social networking service, a free web host, a marketing medium or a business directory like a bullet between the eyes. MER-C 04:24, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia should go on I) free web search engine at the fashion of the good old Altavista times where "everybody can be found" II) Free web hosting where "everybody can publish". --Neurorebel (talk) 08:46, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

This should be the highest priority – exposing Wikipedia editing to more people around the globe is the single best way to attract greater coverage and knowledge on Wikipedia. SUM1 (talk) 14:30, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

This theme is the most important themes of all because it is the best way to cover more articles from around the world. Kent961 (talk) 11:36, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Ideologically I believe diversity and global sharing of knowledge is very important, however in terms of the priorities here I place this theme last. The reason why I place it last despite my belief that it is an important concept, is because I think Wikipedia is already struggling with issues of community and quality of knowledge content and we need to get those right first as top priority. If we can't get these basics right amongst the current editors who at least primarily all use the same language and have some similarity of culture, how is Wikipedia going to handle the additional complexity of hundreds of languages, cultures, ideologies, etc? Furthermore, I have made suggestions under Community and Knowledge (and to a lesser extent Technology) that will also help make Wikipedia more accessible to people from other countries. For example, there are third party organisations that are making great strides in free in-browser language translations which will benefit Wikipedia without Wikipedia necessarily having to do the work of solving this issue themselves. I've also suggested different ways of letting people contribute to wikipedia even if their english is not great - so for example, someone who has knowledge but whose written English is broken could post their information in a Talk working group project management page and someone else could rewrite that information for publication on wikipedia. As such I believe that if we focus on the other themes as first priority, it will provide flow on benefits to this theme. Powertothepeople (talk) 03:05, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

• I wouldn't consider this among the top priorities. I think this can be very costly for only low returns. Instead I think we should rather focus on improving the platform to be more integrative of new editors and to engage existing editors / keep them engaged. Furthermore we should rather inform about Wikipedia's usefulness and encourage others to tackle this issue. For instances the nations in question could run relevant programs or forward financial means to us to create/run such. This would require them to see the value of this of course. Other than that I think there are low-cost ways of getting key people onboard - in particular ways that are not taking place offline and which I outlined here.

Furthermore I support User:Powertothepeople's statement above. --Fixuture (talk) 20:36, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Focus requires tradeoffs. If we increase our effort in this area in the next 15 years, is there anything we’re doing today that we would need to stop doing?

If this were placed as top priority over the other themes, then some issues might arise:

1. Content quality. There are already problems with the quality of content, and if Wikipedia focuses more on cultures that may not consider anything wrong with plagiarism, propaganda, or conflicts of interest - or who have lower or simply different educational standards - the balance might shift too far towards Wikipedia being just another poor quality unreliable knowledge source. Additionally, content created by people in countries that are sexist or have class systems or homophobia etc will whether they intend to or not likely end up biasing the content with these values. This is always the challenge when a dominant culture collides with another: does Wikipedia change itself, including values, to be more accommodating of other cultures or does it ask them to conform and assimilate?
2. Healthy community. There are already conflicts within the community - high editor drop off, edit battles, spam, vandalism, newbie mistakes etc - which is again likely to get worse if the primary influx of new editors creates extra workload for existing editors due to quality issues (see point 1) as well as potential conflict over cultural differences. If we have an increase in editors who are sexist, classist, racist, homophobic, etc it will affect both the community and the content.

Obviously, there is a middle ground somewhere, and I do believe that diversity is important. I just think Wikipedia needs to fix existing issues before biting off more than it can chew. Powertothepeople (talk) 03:35, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Consolidate Policies into a small and coherent set of statements

Wikipedia's policies are spread across many pages and these are complemented by guidelines and essays which often contradict existing policies. Some policy statements are vague. It is currently possible to find a policy that supports just about anything a user wants to do or facilitates anything that a reverter wants to deny. In addition, there is considerable policy creep - with certain groups using their daily editing experience to adjust the policies so that they fall into line with whatever position they are advocating.

For example, WP's policy on external links clearly states that "may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia (external links)" and that "acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic, information that could not be added to the article" and that the the "External links section is one of the optional standard appendices and footers." (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links). These statements appear to suggest that a small number of relevant external links are a standard part of an article and encourages users to include links to such things as professional or industry associations etc. Most editors would not imagine that the inclusion of a few, carefully selected links would attract any hostility. However, the same policy also says that "Links in the 'External links' section should be kept to a minimum" and that "Long lists of links are not acceptable" but does not specify what is meant by long. The latter two statements are currently being used by the good people at the Wikipedia External Links Project to justify the deletion of ALL external links other than one official link for a small number of defined article types such as commercial organisations, professional associations and biographies.

In another example, the Wikipedia Statement of Best Practice for Librarians and Archivists, (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Library/Cultural_Professionals) encourages archivists and librarians to add links to their collections as references, further reading or external links. However, one user has written an essay which cautions archivists against adding their collections to the 'External Links' section (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Beetstra/Archivists) and it appears that this advice is being taken very seriously by archivists themselves (See: http://aao-archivists.ca/Archeion/3272734) and by Wikipedia editors with reversionist inclinations, who use both the policy and the essay to deny the inclusion of archival collections as external links. I question the purpose of having a statement of best practice, when essays with entirely different advice are tolerated. These types of contradictions create a great deal of confusion.

In a different example, one Wikipedia guideline states that it may be "useful in editing articles to create a red link to indicate that a page will be created soon or that an article should be created for the topic because the subject is notable and verifiable." This guideline is being used to force editors to remove external links and replace them with red links in a de facto "See Also" section. However, the policy also states that "Red links are useless in these contexts [navigational features, including "see also" sections]." A WP essay reiterates the observation that red links should be avoided in navigational features, but its general tone and advice suggests that large numbers of red links are undesirable in any article and advises that "Wikipedia editors should write a new article before they create links to that article elsewhere in the encyclopedia" (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Write_the_article_first) which appears to be at odds with the policy and is certainly at odds with the way that the policy is currently being interpreted in certain Wikpedia projects.

The preceding are just a few illustrative examples of a relatively widespread problem across Wikipedia's policies, guidelines and essays. The plethora of policies, guidelines and essays requires users to engage in extensive reading and navigation, and is off-putting to new editors. Even more experienced editors, who have had the time to read and digest most of the policies and guidelines, are often confused by the the fact that policies are redolent with internal contradictions, vague/ poorly defined terms which can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways creates a very confusing, and forbidding editing environment. To add further to confusion, the policies are being constantly changed by editors, resulting in policy creep. Wikipedia's core policies are desperately in need of consolidation and clarity. BronHiggs (talk) 09:19, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

But there are pages that do just that. See Category:Wikipedia policies. And it's a good thing that policies are getting revised, adjusted and adapted. People certainly need to watch closely for changes to them and participate in change-discussions. Some policy statements are intentionally vague and some need to be specified / improved in collaboration. It's normal for essays to oppose certain guidelines - they're essays and not community-adopted guidelines. If guidelines contradict each other they need to be fixed via due discussion.

There typically are good reasons for why things are as they are policy-wise here. And for instance "not specify[ing] what is meant by long" for external links sections is a good thing as that differs per case (per article and links etc). If Wikipedia editors take essays seriously they could at one point become policies. But they aren't at that point.

Policy-consolidation pages can be problematic but they might also be useful if they e.g. inform about the most important policies in a very short way. One thing that I would support would be videos that introduce people to basic policies that are most relevant without being overly detailed.

If the videos are good and properly licensed they could theoretically also get embedded into the meta page.

--Fixuture (talk) 19:41, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

I cannot see how a simple index of all the policies addresses the problem of the inherent contraditions in those policies, and the very mixed way they are being interpreted on a daily basis. Constant changing of policies means that the policies are unstable, and this contributes to confusion. I realise that policies are subject to change - but substantive changes should be discussed on talk pages rather than just inserted into the policy using incremental changes to words so that the entire meaning is altered - currently this is not happening. New editors are effectively blocked from participating in discussion about policy change, so appropriate discussion would provide more opportunities for a broader range of editors to become involved. Have no idea how the point about videos is relevant to this discussion. BronHiggs (talk) 00:11, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

I have given a very concrete example of how long is currently being interpreted by the folk at the Wikpedia External Links Project. One official link for selected articles that contain names of organisations or people is permitted; anything more than one external link is defined as excessive. For all other pages, even one external links is considered excessive and will be reverted. There are no exceptions, in spite of the fact that the El policy outlines a number of exceptions. Members of ELP are currently locating scores of articles every day and deleting entire external links sections while simulteneously admonishing editors for adding them, writing essays about the evil of external links, and changing the policy so that it accords with their editing philosophy. I find it very hard to believe that this is what the policy makers originally meant by long and this example underscores the need for practical guidelines within policies. This type of reverting does little to encourage bold editing and worse, drives away many new editors who simply don't understand what they are doing that is so wrong. BronHiggs (talk) 00:23, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

What else is important to add to this theme to make it stronger?

Poorly documented regions of the world

If we truly want a global perspective that serves equally all parts of the world, then we need to revisit our policies for regions that have poor to non-existent documentation. I have seen articles on local history of a region of an African country, for instance, deleted for lack of sourcing. Now a similar article about the history of a small town in the US would be just as encyclopaedic, but sourcing would be easily available so that article would survive. In the African case, the information probably comes from an oral tradition. I don't know what the answer to this is, but just throwing this out there with all its inherent difficulties, Wikimedia could set up a system for people with oral information to make some kind of formal deposition. Thus, we know who provided the information and how they acquired it, making it possible to cite it. SpinningSpark 08:45, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

This formal deposition of oral tradition and local knowledge from Africa and other regions of the world is a brilliant idea in my opinion and something I strongly support as someone working in the area of Africa on Wikipedia, frustrated with the lack of coverage. SUM1 (talk) 18:32, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Considering the fact that in West Africa, griots or respected storytellers have provided one of the major sources of information for the history of their region and have largely formed the basis of most studies on West African history, it's clear that oral tradition is not a set of fairy tales as some might assume but instead is a very important, resilient and collective source of ethnic knowledge. SUM1 (talk) 19:09, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

That is also a description of what happens every time that i try to report about Latin American culture, everything is fine until I search for sources then in the best situation, it dies in a poorly redacted newspaper article, even for well known or notable facts. --Neurorebel (talk) 08:36, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

@Neurorebel: That is not exactly what I had in mind. You seem to have written mostly on Uruguayan cuisine. There is no shortage of books in English on the subject and I am sure there must be much more in Spanish. There is no excuse in your case for not starting with the sources and write from what you find there rather than starting with what you have heard from your friends in the cafe. I am talking about places where there is no history of documenting events in a written form, or at least not until recently. SpinningSpark 11:15, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Maybe revisiting the old oral citations project from 2011 would be apt here? I know on the English Wikipedia there was a lot of pushback on this idea from editors because of quality issues (not the least from how to deal with WP:V), but it is something worth noting especially in societies (like mine here in the Philippines) where there is a stronger oral tradition as opposed to a written one. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 00:07, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

If we want to cover up much articles about the world, we would need promising articles about those regions. For example in the island of Java, we can get a lot of articles quickly and efficiently. But in the island of New Guinea, we can't get fast and efficient articles because of the lack of internet service in the area for example, etc. Kent961 (talk) 11:48, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Encourage editors in the Indian Subcontinent to create articles in their native languages

My main efforts are directed towards fixing links to DAB pages and other bad links. One of my principal strategies is to look at corresponding articles in home languages. They very often either give the answer at once or make it easy to find. I have used the wonderful {{ill}} template to link to more than 100 non-English Wikis (yes, really). There's one glaring hole: the Indian Subcontinent. I have used Nepali and Telugu Wikis to solve perhaps three problems in English Wiki. In every other case where I've tried to solve a problem relating to the Subcontinent, either the article or the information isn't there.

Hindi - 260M native speakers, 119K articles. Urdu - 65M, 122K. Bengali - 226M, 50K. (Those aren't the only major languages, of course.)
Greek - 13M, 130K. Slovenian - 2.5M, 156K. Welsh - 700K, 91K. (Those Wikis can be very good on the topics they should be good on.)
Cebuano - 21M, 4.4M [sic]. (A lot of the articles are very stubby - but they're there!)

Imagine a reader: a kid growing up in a village who is learning English at school as a second language, and who wants to learn more about (say) local history, or a personality from their area, or a film. I would want to start from an article in my mother tongue. I might even edit it. I might even pluck up the courage to translate it into another language I know (not necessarily English).

I suppose my idea is to spread the concept of "anyone can edit" out to languages who haven't really cottoned on to it yet. Narky Blert (talk) 18:24, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

I have a concern which is very similar to the issue you describe. A lot of articles from the Indian subcontinent, even on relatively large and significant subjects, suffer quite a lot of problems regarding the English and the Wikipedia Manual of Style. It's almost like there is a separate Indian English wiki within the English wiki. Even an article as significant as the Law of India had basic grammar problems which I had to take it upon myself to fix. Take a lesser known article like Peruru, India and the concern I'm talking about becomes a lot worse. I think your idea of encouraging Indian editors to work in their native language wikis could evade this problem to an extent. I also think Indian editors should have a greater awareness of the general English Wikipedia Manual of Style. SUM1 (talk) 18:50, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

This is an understatement. I see a lot of copyright violations, and unencyclopedic garbage from this part of the world. Given the WMF's own research, this is not surprising. MER-C 03:58, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, encourage contributions in native languages, but I don't agree that contributions in English should be discouraged from editors with poor command of the language. Especially not in India, where English is a lingua franca and the natural choice to reach a wide audience. Poor grammar is amongst the very least of the problems we have from problematic editors, and is easily fixed. No one should be thrown out merely for not having that skill; we are supposed to be trying to be more inclusive, not less. Better tools and systems for finding foreign-language sources would be a more productive thing to aim for. More than once I have been stumped trying to find proof of existence for the subject of an Indian article (let alone proof of notability) because I have no idea what the thing is called in Bengali, nor how to write it in the appropriate script. SpinningSpark 13:38, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

I think discouraging anyone from editing English Wikipedia on the basis of language would worsen the skewed demographics of the editor community. Far better will be improved automatic spelling and grammar checking (conceivably automated). Embedded translation between languages to more easily import/export content between languages. Encouraging native language contributions is obviously important, but enabling content flow between language versions is equally important. Ensuring that copyright and referencing is understood is a training issue for all new users. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 09:07, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Minor thing: end the policy on omitting certain country links

This is a minor thing, but I believe in order to make Wikipedia more global, the policy on purposefully omitting relevant country links simply because the country is deemed to be well-known is a backwards idea and only serves to inhibit the integration and standardisation of Wikipedia. Not only do I often find that in the same line, the first mention of a country like France is linked, whereas just after it the first mention of the United States isn't, but I've even found that a lot of articles about events in the United States do not even mention the country in the lead sentence, even when it was where a major event happened. This was the case with the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting. I've even found that on some United States articles, relatively large US cities aren't even linked either. It's like these editors don't realise that anyone can view Wikipedia and people from all around the world do every day. Fixing this policy is one small step Wikipedia could take to achieving greater global integration of the Wiki. SUM1 (talk) 14:44, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Detaching from country-confinements and building a global voice

We should try to uncouple from the constraints of individual countries (incl. the US; especially when we're thinking on the long-term!) and make sure we operate on the international level as much as possible. No government should be able to censor or control Wikipedia in malicious ways. Furthermore when individual countries block Wikipedia or otherwise obstruct proper Wikipedia operation (or engage in any other Wikimedia-relevant activities) we should offer help and a voice. --Fixuture (talk) 20:52, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Who else will be working in this area and how might we partner with them?

In general, outside partners could help improve the usefulness of the 'Page information' link on the left hand panel, edit summaries, and editor stats tracking. For example, one oft-overlooked limitation of Wikipedia's content is readability. Several universities could help to apply well established readability metrics to articles. Editor behaviour is somewhat dependent on the metrics provided (e.g. editors who aim to optimise their edit per month count). Automated metrics could track: readability of each article, readability change (particularly if large) of individual edits, net readability contributions of individual editors. Checks would have to be done to ensure it doesn't encourage gaming the system though! T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 11:02, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

References

Oral history organisations and projects which may partner to capture and translate information from around the globe and put the information on wikipedia. Powertothepeople (talk) 03:43, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

On middle east Asia it must be a must... Sikitae.tae soo (talk) 17:36, 12 June 2017 (UTC)