Discuss this story
- An interesting text, thank you! I have shared it with some colleagues at the Foundation. Ijon ( talk) 21:25, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
- Thank you very much for this. An ongoing objective for MobileFrontend is to get rid of it, or in other words
phabricator:T158181. A while ago we wrote
mw:Principles, building on
Ward Cunningham's wiki design principles which are still valid nowadays.
Interestingly, in recent months the WMF seems to be focusing more on the core features of the wiki, for instance Special:RecentChanges, and less on bells and whistles: maybe some long-neglected issues will be fixed, but there's also a potential for deeper damage if hybris emerges. (Or just poor allocation of resources: for instance the revision limit has been "temporarily" reduced from 5000 to 500 for months now. One would expect a 100+ M$/y org to be able to provide us a more performant database than in the past, but seems not.) Nemo 06:59, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
- Thank
Ijon and
Nemo_bis for the comments. The Phabricator task and the
MetaMediaWiki page you mention are closely related, and I'm now following both. - Pete Forsyth ( talk) 02:04, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
- Thank
Ijon and
Nemo_bis for the comments. The Phabricator task and the
- I'd like to summarize, and briefly respond to, comments on this essay from elsewhere on the web. I'll try to add more as they come up.
- Mike Linksvayer observes that it's more like three essays. This resonates; I found it challenging to find the proper scope for this essay. The three topics Mike identifies all overlap substantially, and I relished the opportunity to explore them all in one place. Editors Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner were very helpful in helping me modify the scope. I hope to go into more depth on various topic in the future.
- Charles Matthews suggested various related ideas.
- Adam Hyde (founder of FLOSS Manuals etc.) remarked on the "DIY" look of MediaWiki software, compares it to the punk rock aesthetic, and thinks some might feel more inclined to touch and interact with it than they would in a more polished interface. - Pete Forsyth ( talk) 02:04, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
- There are some systemic factors that make trust difficult
- The lack of adequate references. While there are certainly a lot of online archives containing historical and technical data, there are a huge number of documents available only in hardcopy or available only to members of particular organizations.
- The lack of an effective dispute resolution mechanism. I've given up on large edits because content is often determined by who has more stamina.
- The lack of volunteers. Wikepedia badly needs more editors with a technical background, but not enough are willing to volunteer and not enough organizations are willing to offer the editorial services of their staff pro bono. This leads to articles with significant errors that nobody is willing to correct in a timely fashion.
- The presence of circle squarers and other cranks, and plain vandals. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul ( talk) 19:07, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
- I only read a fraction of this long editorial. I find the internet resists long-form writing, preferring bits and snippets of hard fact, and the last thing Wikipedia needs is one more long opinion piece. It needs doers, not talkers. Software is secondary at best. If you don't have skilled, mature people of good will who like rolling up their sleeves to work together, it doesn't matter what tools they have. Technical improvements are far down my wish list for Wikipedia. It looks like a lot of wasted time and effort that could be better spent somewhere else. "Ask not what..."
Vmavanti ( talk) 03:59, 3 May 2020 (UTC)- "If you don't have skilled, mature people of good will who like rolling up their sleeves to work together, it doesn't matter what tools they have." I see, so you argue that Wikipedia should never have been created, we should have insisted on Nupedia instead of trying a new software.
Nemo 07:53, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
- Did I say that? Where? I don't see how anything you wrote proceeds logically from anything I wrote. When I was kid, my mom used to say to me and my siblings, "Aren't your little legs tired from jumping to conclusions?" The temptation to read between the lines, interpret, and extrapolate is common, but, like this article, it helps very little.
Vmavanti ( talk) 14:11, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
- Did I say that? Where? I don't see how anything you wrote proceeds logically from anything I wrote. When I was kid, my mom used to say to me and my siblings, "Aren't your little legs tired from jumping to conclusions?" The temptation to read between the lines, interpret, and extrapolate is common, but, like this article, it helps very little.
- "If you don't have skilled, mature people of good will who like rolling up their sleeves to work together, it doesn't matter what tools they have." I see, so you argue that Wikipedia should never have been created, we should have insisted on Nupedia instead of trying a new software.
Nemo 07:53, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
- I only read a fraction of this long editorial. I find the internet resists long-form writing, preferring bits and snippets of hard fact, and the last thing Wikipedia needs is one more long opinion piece. It needs doers, not talkers. Software is secondary at best. If you don't have skilled, mature people of good will who like rolling up their sleeves to work together, it doesn't matter what tools they have. Technical improvements are far down my wish list for Wikipedia. It looks like a lot of wasted time and effort that could be better spent somewhere else. "Ask not what..."
- We could certainly use better tools. Teaching at editathons I spend much time explaining the things Visual Editor does poorly, and often newbies fail to understand how to use Talk Pages because they need to learn an old-fashioned markup language before they can ask questions about such matters as, uhh, how to use the markup language. And all this silly stuff about indent and outdent and reply-links and four tildes and "My talk page or yours".
- Last year I started doing Quora and it's quite easy. Many writers there do excellent long-form essays on complex topics, probably because they get paid for good work. Some participants there make the suggestion that Quora is better than Wikipedia, which of course is dumb since that's not the purpose, but if a similar level of technical development work could go into Wikipedia forums and mobile usage we would attract, or anyway keep and develop, more new, smart, content editors.
Jim.henderson (
talk) 00:46, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
- No one needs to learn markup to edit Wikipedia. Or the Visual Editor. Just some basic templates. Colored syntax helps. Sourcing is easy with the pop-up menu templates, but many people don't use them. I don't know why. I don't know what the big deal is about colon indents. I see experienced editors use asterisks. Why? A colon is easier to type than an asterisk. Four tildes: the upper left corner of the keyboard below the ESC key. That's easy. Let's get real. If people can't get the easy stuff right, should they even be editing? No. Talk pages? There's a misnomer. Many people don't respond, and when they do, it's not helpful. Strangers pop up to insult you. Administrators pop up to insult you. There ought to be discussions, but it's usually more like a wrestling match. To repeat my point, tech matters are not high on my long list of priorities for Wikipedia. A lot of people might want to take a look at the proper use of the comma. Maybe stop using the words "launch" and "subsequently" every other sentence. Study impartiality. Maybe stop writing love letters to people and causes they admire. I have found Quora to be nearly useless. Vmavanti ( talk) 02:46, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Discuss this story
- An interesting text, thank you! I have shared it with some colleagues at the Foundation. Ijon ( talk) 21:25, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
- Thank you very much for this. An ongoing objective for MobileFrontend is to get rid of it, or in other words
phabricator:T158181. A while ago we wrote
mw:Principles, building on
Ward Cunningham's wiki design principles which are still valid nowadays.
Interestingly, in recent months the WMF seems to be focusing more on the core features of the wiki, for instance Special:RecentChanges, and less on bells and whistles: maybe some long-neglected issues will be fixed, but there's also a potential for deeper damage if hybris emerges. (Or just poor allocation of resources: for instance the revision limit has been "temporarily" reduced from 5000 to 500 for months now. One would expect a 100+ M$/y org to be able to provide us a more performant database than in the past, but seems not.) Nemo 06:59, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
- Thank
Ijon and
Nemo_bis for the comments. The Phabricator task and the
MetaMediaWiki page you mention are closely related, and I'm now following both. - Pete Forsyth ( talk) 02:04, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
- Thank
Ijon and
Nemo_bis for the comments. The Phabricator task and the
- I'd like to summarize, and briefly respond to, comments on this essay from elsewhere on the web. I'll try to add more as they come up.
- Mike Linksvayer observes that it's more like three essays. This resonates; I found it challenging to find the proper scope for this essay. The three topics Mike identifies all overlap substantially, and I relished the opportunity to explore them all in one place. Editors Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner were very helpful in helping me modify the scope. I hope to go into more depth on various topic in the future.
- Charles Matthews suggested various related ideas.
- Adam Hyde (founder of FLOSS Manuals etc.) remarked on the "DIY" look of MediaWiki software, compares it to the punk rock aesthetic, and thinks some might feel more inclined to touch and interact with it than they would in a more polished interface. - Pete Forsyth ( talk) 02:04, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
- There are some systemic factors that make trust difficult
- The lack of adequate references. While there are certainly a lot of online archives containing historical and technical data, there are a huge number of documents available only in hardcopy or available only to members of particular organizations.
- The lack of an effective dispute resolution mechanism. I've given up on large edits because content is often determined by who has more stamina.
- The lack of volunteers. Wikepedia badly needs more editors with a technical background, but not enough are willing to volunteer and not enough organizations are willing to offer the editorial services of their staff pro bono. This leads to articles with significant errors that nobody is willing to correct in a timely fashion.
- The presence of circle squarers and other cranks, and plain vandals. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul ( talk) 19:07, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
- I only read a fraction of this long editorial. I find the internet resists long-form writing, preferring bits and snippets of hard fact, and the last thing Wikipedia needs is one more long opinion piece. It needs doers, not talkers. Software is secondary at best. If you don't have skilled, mature people of good will who like rolling up their sleeves to work together, it doesn't matter what tools they have. Technical improvements are far down my wish list for Wikipedia. It looks like a lot of wasted time and effort that could be better spent somewhere else. "Ask not what..."
Vmavanti ( talk) 03:59, 3 May 2020 (UTC)- "If you don't have skilled, mature people of good will who like rolling up their sleeves to work together, it doesn't matter what tools they have." I see, so you argue that Wikipedia should never have been created, we should have insisted on Nupedia instead of trying a new software.
Nemo 07:53, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
- Did I say that? Where? I don't see how anything you wrote proceeds logically from anything I wrote. When I was kid, my mom used to say to me and my siblings, "Aren't your little legs tired from jumping to conclusions?" The temptation to read between the lines, interpret, and extrapolate is common, but, like this article, it helps very little.
Vmavanti ( talk) 14:11, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
- Did I say that? Where? I don't see how anything you wrote proceeds logically from anything I wrote. When I was kid, my mom used to say to me and my siblings, "Aren't your little legs tired from jumping to conclusions?" The temptation to read between the lines, interpret, and extrapolate is common, but, like this article, it helps very little.
- "If you don't have skilled, mature people of good will who like rolling up their sleeves to work together, it doesn't matter what tools they have." I see, so you argue that Wikipedia should never have been created, we should have insisted on Nupedia instead of trying a new software.
Nemo 07:53, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
- I only read a fraction of this long editorial. I find the internet resists long-form writing, preferring bits and snippets of hard fact, and the last thing Wikipedia needs is one more long opinion piece. It needs doers, not talkers. Software is secondary at best. If you don't have skilled, mature people of good will who like rolling up their sleeves to work together, it doesn't matter what tools they have. Technical improvements are far down my wish list for Wikipedia. It looks like a lot of wasted time and effort that could be better spent somewhere else. "Ask not what..."
- We could certainly use better tools. Teaching at editathons I spend much time explaining the things Visual Editor does poorly, and often newbies fail to understand how to use Talk Pages because they need to learn an old-fashioned markup language before they can ask questions about such matters as, uhh, how to use the markup language. And all this silly stuff about indent and outdent and reply-links and four tildes and "My talk page or yours".
- Last year I started doing Quora and it's quite easy. Many writers there do excellent long-form essays on complex topics, probably because they get paid for good work. Some participants there make the suggestion that Quora is better than Wikipedia, which of course is dumb since that's not the purpose, but if a similar level of technical development work could go into Wikipedia forums and mobile usage we would attract, or anyway keep and develop, more new, smart, content editors.
Jim.henderson (
talk) 00:46, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
- No one needs to learn markup to edit Wikipedia. Or the Visual Editor. Just some basic templates. Colored syntax helps. Sourcing is easy with the pop-up menu templates, but many people don't use them. I don't know why. I don't know what the big deal is about colon indents. I see experienced editors use asterisks. Why? A colon is easier to type than an asterisk. Four tildes: the upper left corner of the keyboard below the ESC key. That's easy. Let's get real. If people can't get the easy stuff right, should they even be editing? No. Talk pages? There's a misnomer. Many people don't respond, and when they do, it's not helpful. Strangers pop up to insult you. Administrators pop up to insult you. There ought to be discussions, but it's usually more like a wrestling match. To repeat my point, tech matters are not high on my long list of priorities for Wikipedia. A lot of people might want to take a look at the proper use of the comma. Maybe stop using the words "launch" and "subsequently" every other sentence. Study impartiality. Maybe stop writing love letters to people and causes they admire. I have found Quora to be nearly useless. Vmavanti ( talk) 02:46, 4 May 2020 (UTC)