Mailing List Archive

Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25) [ In reply to ]
Thanks for the response, Katherine. I'm a little concerned that we can have
such "vastly different" interpretations of the same text. I tried to get
some Wikimedians to give me their take-away, and have not gotten a
consistent direction from those.

What I mostly remember after reading your response is that Wikimedia would
be doing more of the same, and more.

This is a two-folded concern for me. On one hand, it feels like the
direction is too multi-interpretable. While vagueness and leaving specifics
open is only natural, I do believe that a clear direction is essential to
take the next steps.

Second, after reading your response I'm left with the feeling that we don't
really take a direction. Choosing a direction is also determining what not
to do. This was also a main criticism of the earlier version presented at
Wikimania. Directions are painful, because we're not satisfying everyone.

Currently, the WMF is asking people and affiliates to 'endorse' this text.
It has a high textual quality and says a number of things that resonate
with my ideals and those that I know to be Wikimedia's ideals. However, I
don't feel it provides the direction we need yet. I'm not keen on endorsing
a direction, which may then be interpreted in a vastly different way.

I should also note: I have little hope of changing the process. And it may
very well be that I'm alone in this concern. But I would suggest that you
(plural) select 25 (or more) random Wikimedians that were not intimately
involved with the strategic process, let them read the direction, and let
them summarize their take-aways. (that is working from the assumption you
have not done so already) If their variance is too large, that may be an
indicator that unfortunately another cycle of labor may be needed before we
can enter the next round. Given all effort and resources that have been
invested in this process, such sanity check may be worth while.

Warmly,

Lodewijk

ps: just to state the obvious: I'm highly appreciative of all the work that
went into this. It could have turned out worse in many many ways, and I
appreciate all the efforts that went into involving the community. I'm
always feeling guilty about not having been able to spend way more time on
the strategic process than I did in all the various steps of the process -
such rebut would be totally fair :).

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Katherine Maher <kmaher@wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Sorry for the delay in chiming in. It's been a busy few weeks, and while I
> haven't made a public update about strategy in a while, work has been
> continuing! We've now closed Phase 1, and we're heading into Phase 2, in
> which our objective is to start thinking about how we make the strategic
> direction into a plan of action and implementation. It's an opportunity to
> create greater clarity about how we each understand the direction, how we
> might set goals against it, what we may need to change to achieve these
> goals, and how we can contribute -- as projects, communities, and
> individuals. I’ll be sending my next weekly update shortly but I wanted to
> acknowledge the contributions in this thread first.
>
> I've read through this entire thread, and I've agreed, disagreed, agreed
> again, and started emails only to see new ones come in and have to scrap my
> drafts. While I found myself often agreeing with Erik, I dig the challenges
> you all have put forward and appreciate the diversity of opinions. Some of
> our differences stem from the unique contexts of the groups and individuals
> responding and will result in differences in implementation in each
> community. Other differences, such as questioning the very concept of
> source credibility, will certainly require additional discussion. But
> regardless of where we end up, it has been a delight to follow such a rich,
> substantive conversation. This has been one of the best, and
> most thought-provoking, Wikimedia-l threads I've read in some time, and I
> hope that it is the first of many as we go into Phase 2 of the movement
> strategy process.
>
> A few more responses inline:
>
> 2017-10-04 11:19 GMT-07:00 Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org>:
> >
> > I don't understand what exactly that direction is headed towards, there
> is
> > too much space for a variety of interpretation. The one thing that I take
> > away though, is that we won't place ourselves at the center of the free
> > knowledge universe (as a brand), but want to become a service. We don't
> > expect people to know about 'Wikipedia' in 10 years, but we do want that
> > our work is being put to good use.
>
> It's always helpful to read critique as a challenge to our logical
> assumptions. Lodewijk, I see where your interpretation comes from here, but
> it is vastly different than how I interpret from this statement. To the
> contrary, I wouldn’t say "service" and "brand" are mutually exclusive. I do
> think that Wikimedia should want to continue to be known as a destination
> for free knowledge, and we do want to increase brand awareness, especially
> in areas and contexts where we are not yet well (or not at all) known. Our
> brand (including our communities) and visibility are some of our most
> valuable assets as a movement, and it would be strategically unwise not to
> build on them for long-term planning.
>
> When I think about knowledge as a service, it means that we want this, *and
> much more*. It’s additive. We want to be who we are today, *and* we want to
> provide a service to other institutions. We want to use that brand and
> visibility to work with others in the ecosystem. We also want to be present
> in new experiences and delivery channels, in order to preserve the direct
> interface connection with Wikipedia's contributors and readers that we have
> on the web. I see this as essential - for our readers, it's about ensuring
> a core promise: that the chain of evidence for the information they seek is
> unbroken and transparent, from citation to edit. For our contributors, it's
> about extending ways to contribute as our digital interfaces evolve.
>
> We know from the Phase 1 research that many readers see Wikipedia as a
> utility, whether we like it or not. We know that people reuse our content
> in many contexts. My interpretation of “knowledge as a service” is not that
> we vanish into the background, but that we become ever more essential to
> people's lives. And part of our doing so is not only enriching the
> experience people have on Wikipedia, but investing in how Wikipedia can
> promote the opening of knowledge overall. Today, MediaWiki and Wikibase are
> already infrastructures that serve other free knowledge projects, in turn
> enriching the material on which our projects can draw. What more could we
> do if we supported openness more systemically?
>
> I understand that the direction may still feel too vague. A direction for
> the 2030 horizon is bound to lack specifics. I actually think this is okay.
> The direction comes from a small-ish group of drafters trying to make sense
> of 8 months of thousands of perspectives. In that sense, a small group can
> only do so much. It is now our responsibility, as movement actors, to take
> this direction and interpret it in our respective contexts, based on our
> respective experiences. This will be a major part of Phase 2 of the
> movement discussions.
>
> 2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com>:
> >
> > With an eye to 2030 and WMF's long-term direction, I do think it's
> > worth thinking about Wikidata's centrality, and I would agree with you
> > at least that the phrase "the essential infrastructure of the
> > ecosystem" does overstate what I think WMF should aspire to (the
> > "essential infrastructure" should consist of many open components
> > maintained by different groups).
>
> There is indeed an element of aspiration in that phrase. I knew it would be
> controversial, and we talked about it quite a bit in drafting, but
> advocated that we include it anyway. After all, our vision statement is "a
> world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all
> knowledge." That's certainly inclusive (it has no single parties or
> ownership) but it is also wildly aspirational. But despite the
> impossibility of our that aspiration, it has worked quite well: we've made
> great strides toward a project that is "impossible in theory".
>
> For each person who felt we should moderate the language of the direction,
> there was another who wanted us to be more bold and recapture this
> ambition. They wanted us to believe in ourselves, and give the world
> something to believe in. As Wikimedians, we tend to prefer matter-of-fact,
> sometimes plain and noncommittal statements. While that works well for NPOV
> content, a strategic direction also seeks to inspire ambitious efforts. The
> drafting group removed much of the flowery language from the earlier
> versions of the draft, but the goal was to keep just enough to inspire
> movement actors and external partners.
>
> 2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com>:
> >
> > Wikidata in particular is best seen not as the singular source of
> > truth, but as an important hub in a network of open data providers --
> > primarily governments, public institutions, nonprofits. This is
> > consistent with recent developments around Wikidata such as query
> > federation.
>
> Personally, I couldn’t agree more. I see federated structured data as an
> inevitable (and very favorable) outcome of the concept of a service-based
> model. Distribution enables greater flexibility in implementation and
> customization across the network while improving the resilience of the
> whole system. This is true in terms of technical stability, political
> influence or censorship, and breadth and depth of content. If one starts to
> understand Wikidata as a project, and Wikibase as a platform, we start to
> really be able to see how a broader adoption of open structures and
> attribution models can only enrich and increase the open ecosystem overall.
>
> I also think the Wikidata model is one that has been working very well and
> one that others in our ecosystem could benefit from. Today, on our newest
> Wikimedia project, we work with governments, the private sector, and
> individual community members, in largely constructive ways. And in many
> cases, the very existence of Wikidata makes it possible for these
> institutions to be open, when they would otherwise lack the expertise or
> resources to build their own open data infrastructure.
>
> For me, “Knowledge as a service” means supporting those institutions by
> providing the infrastructure that they can use for this purpose, and also
> accompanying them through the social and institutional changes that come
> with opening data and freeing knowledge. That infrastructure could be
> Wikidata, it could be other Wikimedia projects, or it could be other
> Wikibase instances, depending on what makes the most sense for each
> context.
>
> Anyway, there's a lot more to discuss, and thank you all again for these
> excellent conversations!
>
> I know that some folks were wondering about all the consultation comments
> about features, interfaces, and product improvements that didn't get
> incorporated into the strategy. We knew from the beginning of the processes
> that we'd certainly get quite a few of these requests that were too
> specific to be integrated into long-term strategic thinking and planned
> accordingly to document them. The goal was to consider how they might be
> taken up by either Foundation staff or interested volunteer developers. As
> a result, we're publishing a “Features report” written by Suzie Nussel that
> summarizes these requests, and should be a useful starting point for
> specific improvements that could be addressed in the shorter term.
>
> See you soon with the next strategy update.
>
> Katherine
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 8:01 AM, Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 7:31 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > Wikidata has its own problems in that regard that have triggered
> ongoing
> > > discussions and concerns on the English Wikipedia.[1]
> >
> > Tensions between different communities with overlapping but
> > non-identical objectives are unavoidable. Repository projects like
> > Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons provide huge payoff: they dramatically
> > reduce duplication of effort, enable small language communities to
> > benefit from the work done internationally, and can tackle a more
> > expansive scope than the immediate needs of existing projects. A few
> > examples include:
> >
> > - Wiki Loves Monuments, recognized as the world's largest photo
> competition
> > - Partnerships with countless galleries, libraries, archives, and museums
> > - Wikidata initiatives like mySociety's "Everypolitician" project or Gene
> > Wiki
> >
> > This is not without its costs, however. Differing policies, levels of
> > maturity, and social expectations will always fuel some level of
> > conflict, and the repository approach creates huge usability
> > challenges. The latter is also true for internal wiki features like
> > templates, which shift information out of the article space,
> > disempowering users who no longer understand how the whole is
> > constructed from its parts.
> >
> > I would call these usability and "legibility" issues the single
> > biggest challenge in the development of Wikidata, Structured Data for
> > Commons, and other repository functionality. Much related work has
> > already been done or is ticketed in Phabricator, such as the effective
> > propagation of changes into watchlists, article histories, and
> > notifications. Much more will need to follow.
> >
> > With regard to the issue of citations, it's worth noting that it's
> > already possible to _conditionally_ load data from Wikidata, excluding
> > information that is unsourced or only sourced circularly (i.e. to
> > Wikipedia itself). [1] Template invocations can also override values
> > provided by Wikidata, for example, if there is a source, but it is not
> > considered reliable by the standards of a specific project.
> >
> > > If a digital voice assistant propagates a Wikimedia mistake without
> > telling
> > > users where it got its information from, then there is not even a
> > feedback
> > > form. Editability is of no help at all if people can't find the source.
> >
> > I'm in favor of always indicating at least provenance (something like
> > "Here's a quote from Wikipedia:"), even for short excerpts, and I
> > certainly think WMF and chapters can advocate for this practice.
> > However, where short excerpts are concerned, it's not at all clear
> > that there is a _legal_ issue here, and that full compliance with all
> > requirements of the license is a reasonable "ask".
> >
> > Bing's search result page manages a decent compromise, I think: it
> > shows excerpts from Wikipedia clearly labeled as such, and it links to
> > the CC-BY-SA license if you expand the excerpt, e.g.:
> > https://www.bing.com/search?q=france
> >
> > I know that over the years, many efforts have been undertaken to
> > document best practices for re-use, ranging from local
> > community-created pages to chapter guides and tools like the
> > "Lizenzhinweisgenerator". I don't know what the best-available of
> > these is nowadays, but if none exists, it might be a good idea to
> > develop a new, comprehensive guide that takes into account voice
> > applications, tabular data, and so on.
> >
> > Such a guide would ideally not just be written from a license
> > compliance perspective, but also include recommendations, e.g., on how
> > to best indicate provenance, distinguishing "here's what you must do"
> > from "here's what we recommend".
> >
> > >> Wikidata will often provide a shallow first level of information about
> > >> a subject, while other linked sources provide deeper information. The
> > >> more structured the information, the easier it becomes to validate in
> > >> an automatic fashion that, for example, the subset of country
> > >> population time series data represented in Wikidata is an accurate
> > >> representation of the source material. Even when a large source
> > >> dataset is mirrored by Wikimedia (for low-latency visualization, say),
> > >> you can hash it, digitally sign it, and restrict modifiability of
> > >> copies.
> >
> > > Interesting, though I'm not aware of that being done at present.
> >
> > At present, Wikidata allows users to model constraints on internal
> > data validity. These constraints are used for regularly generated
> > database reports as well as on-demand lookup via
> > https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:ConstraintReport . This kicks
> > in, for example, if you put in an insane number in a population field,
> > or mark a country as female.
> >
> > There is a project underway to also validate against external sources;
> see:
> >
> > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase_Quality_
> > Extensions#Special_Page_Cross-Check_with_external_databases
> >
> > Wikidata still tends to deal with relatively small amounts of data; a
> > highly annotated item like Germany (Q183), for example, comes in at
> > under 1MB in uncompressed JSON form. Time series data like GDP is
> > often included only for a single point in time, or for a subset of the
> > available data. The relatively new "Data:" namespace on Commons exists
> > to store raw datasets; this is only used to a very limited extent so
> > far, but there are some examples of how such data can be visualized,
> > e.g.:
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Graph:Population_history
> >
> > Giving volunteers more powerful tools to select and visualize data
> > while automating much of the effort of maintaining data integrity
> > seems like an achievable and strategic goal, and as these examples
> > show, some building blocks for this are already in place.
> >
> > >> But the proprietary knowledge graphs are valuable to users in ways
> > >> that the previous generation of search engines was not. Interacting
> > >> with a device like you would with a human being ("Alexa/Google/Siri,
> > >> is yarrow edible?") makes knowledge more accessible and usable,
> > >> including to people who have difficulty reading long texts, or who are
> > >> not literate at all. In this sense I don't think WMF should ever find
> > >> itself in the position to argue _against_ inclusion of information
> > >> from Wikimedia projects in these applications.
> >
> > > There is a distinct likelihood that they will make reading Wikipedia
> > > articles progressively obsolete, just like the availability of Googling
> > has
> > > dissuaded many people from sitting down and reading a book.
> >
> > There is an important distinction between "lookup" and "learning"; the
> > former is a transactional activity ("Is this country part of the Euro
> > zone?") and the latter an immersive one ("How did the EU come
> > about?"). Where we now get instant answers from home assistants or
> > search engines, we may have previously skimmed, or performed our own
> > highly optimized search in the local knowledge repository called a
> > "bookshelf".
> >
> > In other words, even if some instant answers lead to a drop in
> > Wikipedia views, it would be unreasonable to assume that those views
> > were "reads" rather than "skims". When you're on a purely
> > transactional journey, you appreciate almost anything that shortens
> > it.
> >
> > I don't think Wikimedia should fight the gravity of a user's
> > intentions out of its own pedagogical motives. Rather, it should make
> > both lookup and learning as appealing as possible. Doing well in the
> > "lookup" category is important to avoid handing too much control off
> > to gatekeepers, and being good in the "learning" category holds the
> > greatest promise for lasting positive impact.
> >
> > As for the larger social issue, at least in the US, the youngest (most
> > googley) generation is the one that reads the most books, and
> > income/education are very strong predictors of whether people do or
> > not:
> > http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/19/slightly-
> > fewer-americans-are-reading-print-books-new-survey-finds/
> >
> > >> The applications themselves are not the problem; the centralized
> > >> gatekeeper control is. Knowledge as an open service (and network) is
> > >> actually the solution to that root problem. It's how we weaken and
> > >> perhaps even break the control of the gatekeepers. Your critique seems
> > >> to boil down to "Let's ask Google for more crumbs". In spite of all
> > >> your anti-corporate social justice rhetoric, that seems to be the path
> > >> to developing a one-sided dependency relationship.
> >
> > > I considered that, but in the end felt that given the extent to which
> > > Google profited from volunteers' work, it wasn't an unfair ask.
> >
> > While I think your proposal to ask Google to share access to resources
> > it already has digitized or licensed is worth considering, I would
> > suggest being very careful about the long term implications of any
> > such agreements. Having a single corporation control volunteers'
> > access to proprietary resources means that such access can also be
> > used as leverage down the road, or abruptly be taken away for other
> > reasons.
> >
> > I think it would be more interesting to spin off the existing
> > "Wikipedia Library" into its own international organization (or home
> > it with an existing one), tasked with giving free knowledge
> > contributors (including potentially to other free knowledge projects
> > like OSM) access to proprietary resources, and pursuing public and
> > private funding of its own. The development of many relationships may
> > take longer, but it is more sustainable in the long run. Moreover, it
> > has the potential to lead to powerful collaborations with existing
> > public/nonprofit digitization and preservation efforts.
> >
> > > Publicise the fact that Google and others profit from volunteer work,
> and
> > > give very little back. The world could do with more articles like this:
> > >
> > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/
> > 2015/07/22/you-dont-know-it-but-youre-working-for-facebook-for-free/
> >
> > I have plenty of criticisms of Facebook, but the fact that users don't
> > get paid for posting selfies isn't one of them. My thoughts on how the
> > free culture movement (not limited to Wikipedia) should interface with
> > the for-profit sector are as follows, FWIW:
> >
> > 1) Demand appropriate levels of taxation on private profits, [2]
> > sufficient investments in public education and cultural institutions,
> > and "open licensing" requirements on government contracts with private
> > corporations.
> >
> > 2) Require compliance with free licenses, first gently, then more
> > firmly. This is a game of diminishing returns, and it's most useful to
> > go after the most blatant and problematic cases. As noted above, "fair
> > use" limits should be understood and taken into consideration.
> >
> > 3) Encourage corporations to be "good citizens" of the free culture
> > world, whether it's through indicating provenance beyond what's
> > legally required, or by contributing directly (open source
> > development, knowledge/data donations, in-kind goods/services,
> > financial contributions). The payoff for them is goodwill and a
> > thriving (i.e. also profitable) open Internet that more people in more
> > places use for more things.
> >
> > 4) Build community-driven, open, nonprofit alternatives to
> > out-of-control corporate quasi-monopolies. As far as proprietary
> > knowledge graphs are concerned, I will reiterate: open data is the
> > solution, not the problem.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Erik
> >
> > [1] See the getValue function in
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:WikidataIB , specifically its
> > "onlysourced" parameter. The module also adds a convenient "Edit this
> > on Wikidata" link to each claim included from there.
> >
> > [2] As far as Wikimedia organizations are concerned, specific tax
> > policy will likely always be out of scope of political advocacy, but
> > the other points need not be.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Katherine Maher
> Executive Director
>
> *We moved! **Our new address:*
>
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600
> San Francisco, CA 94104
>
> +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
> +1 (415) 712 4873
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25) [ In reply to ]
Hello Lodewijk,

no, you are certainly not alone in your concerns. It looks like at this
stage there is little we can do, and the only option left is to not endorse
the document.

Cheers
Yaroslav

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 7:51 PM, Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org>
wrote:

> Thanks for the response, Katherine. I'm a little concerned that we can have
> such "vastly different" interpretations of the same text. I tried to get
> some Wikimedians to give me their take-away, and have not gotten a
> consistent direction from those.
>
> What I mostly remember after reading your response is that Wikimedia would
> be doing more of the same, and more.
>
> This is a two-folded concern for me. On one hand, it feels like the
> direction is too multi-interpretable. While vagueness and leaving specifics
> open is only natural, I do believe that a clear direction is essential to
> take the next steps.
>
> Second, after reading your response I'm left with the feeling that we don't
> really take a direction. Choosing a direction is also determining what not
> to do. This was also a main criticism of the earlier version presented at
> Wikimania. Directions are painful, because we're not satisfying everyone.
>
> Currently, the WMF is asking people and affiliates to 'endorse' this text.
> It has a high textual quality and says a number of things that resonate
> with my ideals and those that I know to be Wikimedia's ideals. However, I
> don't feel it provides the direction we need yet. I'm not keen on endorsing
> a direction, which may then be interpreted in a vastly different way.
>
> I should also note: I have little hope of changing the process. And it may
> very well be that I'm alone in this concern. But I would suggest that you
> (plural) select 25 (or more) random Wikimedians that were not intimately
> involved with the strategic process, let them read the direction, and let
> them summarize their take-aways. (that is working from the assumption you
> have not done so already) If their variance is too large, that may be an
> indicator that unfortunately another cycle of labor may be needed before we
> can enter the next round. Given all effort and resources that have been
> invested in this process, such sanity check may be worth while.
>
> Warmly,
>
> Lodewijk
>
> ps: just to state the obvious: I'm highly appreciative of all the work that
> went into this. It could have turned out worse in many many ways, and I
> appreciate all the efforts that went into involving the community. I'm
> always feeling guilty about not having been able to spend way more time on
> the strategic process than I did in all the various steps of the process -
> such rebut would be totally fair :).
>
> On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Katherine Maher <kmaher@wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Sorry for the delay in chiming in. It's been a busy few weeks, and while
> I
> > haven't made a public update about strategy in a while, work has been
> > continuing! We've now closed Phase 1, and we're heading into Phase 2, in
> > which our objective is to start thinking about how we make the strategic
> > direction into a plan of action and implementation. It's an opportunity
> to
> > create greater clarity about how we each understand the direction, how we
> > might set goals against it, what we may need to change to achieve these
> > goals, and how we can contribute -- as projects, communities, and
> > individuals. I’ll be sending my next weekly update shortly but I wanted
> to
> > acknowledge the contributions in this thread first.
> >
> > I've read through this entire thread, and I've agreed, disagreed, agreed
> > again, and started emails only to see new ones come in and have to scrap
> my
> > drafts. While I found myself often agreeing with Erik, I dig the
> challenges
> > you all have put forward and appreciate the diversity of opinions. Some
> of
> > our differences stem from the unique contexts of the groups and
> individuals
> > responding and will result in differences in implementation in each
> > community. Other differences, such as questioning the very concept of
> > source credibility, will certainly require additional discussion. But
> > regardless of where we end up, it has been a delight to follow such a
> rich,
> > substantive conversation. This has been one of the best, and
> > most thought-provoking, Wikimedia-l threads I've read in some time, and I
> > hope that it is the first of many as we go into Phase 2 of the movement
> > strategy process.
> >
> > A few more responses inline:
> >
> > 2017-10-04 11:19 GMT-07:00 Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org>:
> > >
> > > I don't understand what exactly that direction is headed towards, there
> > is
> > > too much space for a variety of interpretation. The one thing that I
> take
> > > away though, is that we won't place ourselves at the center of the free
> > > knowledge universe (as a brand), but want to become a service. We don't
> > > expect people to know about 'Wikipedia' in 10 years, but we do want
> that
> > > our work is being put to good use.
> >
> > It's always helpful to read critique as a challenge to our logical
> > assumptions. Lodewijk, I see where your interpretation comes from here,
> but
> > it is vastly different than how I interpret from this statement. To the
> > contrary, I wouldn’t say "service" and "brand" are mutually exclusive. I
> do
> > think that Wikimedia should want to continue to be known as a destination
> > for free knowledge, and we do want to increase brand awareness,
> especially
> > in areas and contexts where we are not yet well (or not at all) known.
> Our
> > brand (including our communities) and visibility are some of our most
> > valuable assets as a movement, and it would be strategically unwise not
> to
> > build on them for long-term planning.
> >
> > When I think about knowledge as a service, it means that we want this,
> *and
> > much more*. It’s additive. We want to be who we are today, *and* we want
> to
> > provide a service to other institutions. We want to use that brand and
> > visibility to work with others in the ecosystem. We also want to be
> present
> > in new experiences and delivery channels, in order to preserve the direct
> > interface connection with Wikipedia's contributors and readers that we
> have
> > on the web. I see this as essential - for our readers, it's about
> ensuring
> > a core promise: that the chain of evidence for the information they seek
> is
> > unbroken and transparent, from citation to edit. For our contributors,
> it's
> > about extending ways to contribute as our digital interfaces evolve.
> >
> > We know from the Phase 1 research that many readers see Wikipedia as a
> > utility, whether we like it or not. We know that people reuse our content
> > in many contexts. My interpretation of “knowledge as a service” is not
> that
> > we vanish into the background, but that we become ever more essential to
> > people's lives. And part of our doing so is not only enriching the
> > experience people have on Wikipedia, but investing in how Wikipedia can
> > promote the opening of knowledge overall. Today, MediaWiki and Wikibase
> are
> > already infrastructures that serve other free knowledge projects, in turn
> > enriching the material on which our projects can draw. What more could we
> > do if we supported openness more systemically?
> >
> > I understand that the direction may still feel too vague. A direction for
> > the 2030 horizon is bound to lack specifics. I actually think this is
> okay.
> > The direction comes from a small-ish group of drafters trying to make
> sense
> > of 8 months of thousands of perspectives. In that sense, a small group
> can
> > only do so much. It is now our responsibility, as movement actors, to
> take
> > this direction and interpret it in our respective contexts, based on our
> > respective experiences. This will be a major part of Phase 2 of the
> > movement discussions.
> >
> > 2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > With an eye to 2030 and WMF's long-term direction, I do think it's
> > > worth thinking about Wikidata's centrality, and I would agree with you
> > > at least that the phrase "the essential infrastructure of the
> > > ecosystem" does overstate what I think WMF should aspire to (the
> > > "essential infrastructure" should consist of many open components
> > > maintained by different groups).
> >
> > There is indeed an element of aspiration in that phrase. I knew it would
> be
> > controversial, and we talked about it quite a bit in drafting, but
> > advocated that we include it anyway. After all, our vision statement is
> "a
> > world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all
> > knowledge." That's certainly inclusive (it has no single parties or
> > ownership) but it is also wildly aspirational. But despite the
> > impossibility of our that aspiration, it has worked quite well: we've
> made
> > great strides toward a project that is "impossible in theory".
> >
> > For each person who felt we should moderate the language of the
> direction,
> > there was another who wanted us to be more bold and recapture this
> > ambition. They wanted us to believe in ourselves, and give the world
> > something to believe in. As Wikimedians, we tend to prefer
> matter-of-fact,
> > sometimes plain and noncommittal statements. While that works well for
> NPOV
> > content, a strategic direction also seeks to inspire ambitious efforts.
> The
> > drafting group removed much of the flowery language from the earlier
> > versions of the draft, but the goal was to keep just enough to inspire
> > movement actors and external partners.
> >
> > 2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > Wikidata in particular is best seen not as the singular source of
> > > truth, but as an important hub in a network of open data providers --
> > > primarily governments, public institutions, nonprofits. This is
> > > consistent with recent developments around Wikidata such as query
> > > federation.
> >
> > Personally, I couldn’t agree more. I see federated structured data as an
> > inevitable (and very favorable) outcome of the concept of a service-based
> > model. Distribution enables greater flexibility in implementation and
> > customization across the network while improving the resilience of the
> > whole system. This is true in terms of technical stability, political
> > influence or censorship, and breadth and depth of content. If one starts
> to
> > understand Wikidata as a project, and Wikibase as a platform, we start to
> > really be able to see how a broader adoption of open structures and
> > attribution models can only enrich and increase the open ecosystem
> overall.
> >
> > I also think the Wikidata model is one that has been working very well
> and
> > one that others in our ecosystem could benefit from. Today, on our newest
> > Wikimedia project, we work with governments, the private sector, and
> > individual community members, in largely constructive ways. And in many
> > cases, the very existence of Wikidata makes it possible for these
> > institutions to be open, when they would otherwise lack the expertise or
> > resources to build their own open data infrastructure.
> >
> > For me, “Knowledge as a service” means supporting those institutions by
> > providing the infrastructure that they can use for this purpose, and also
> > accompanying them through the social and institutional changes that come
> > with opening data and freeing knowledge. That infrastructure could be
> > Wikidata, it could be other Wikimedia projects, or it could be other
> > Wikibase instances, depending on what makes the most sense for each
> > context.
> >
> > Anyway, there's a lot more to discuss, and thank you all again for these
> > excellent conversations!
> >
> > I know that some folks were wondering about all the consultation comments
> > about features, interfaces, and product improvements that didn't get
> > incorporated into the strategy. We knew from the beginning of the
> processes
> > that we'd certainly get quite a few of these requests that were too
> > specific to be integrated into long-term strategic thinking and planned
> > accordingly to document them. The goal was to consider how they might be
> > taken up by either Foundation staff or interested volunteer developers.
> As
> > a result, we're publishing a “Features report” written by Suzie Nussel
> that
> > summarizes these requests, and should be a useful starting point for
> > specific improvements that could be addressed in the shorter term.
> >
> > See you soon with the next strategy update.
> >
> > Katherine
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 8:01 AM, Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 7:31 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Wikidata has its own problems in that regard that have triggered
> > ongoing
> > > > discussions and concerns on the English Wikipedia.[1]
> > >
> > > Tensions between different communities with overlapping but
> > > non-identical objectives are unavoidable. Repository projects like
> > > Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons provide huge payoff: they dramatically
> > > reduce duplication of effort, enable small language communities to
> > > benefit from the work done internationally, and can tackle a more
> > > expansive scope than the immediate needs of existing projects. A few
> > > examples include:
> > >
> > > - Wiki Loves Monuments, recognized as the world's largest photo
> > competition
> > > - Partnerships with countless galleries, libraries, archives, and
> museums
> > > - Wikidata initiatives like mySociety's "Everypolitician" project or
> Gene
> > > Wiki
> > >
> > > This is not without its costs, however. Differing policies, levels of
> > > maturity, and social expectations will always fuel some level of
> > > conflict, and the repository approach creates huge usability
> > > challenges. The latter is also true for internal wiki features like
> > > templates, which shift information out of the article space,
> > > disempowering users who no longer understand how the whole is
> > > constructed from its parts.
> > >
> > > I would call these usability and "legibility" issues the single
> > > biggest challenge in the development of Wikidata, Structured Data for
> > > Commons, and other repository functionality. Much related work has
> > > already been done or is ticketed in Phabricator, such as the effective
> > > propagation of changes into watchlists, article histories, and
> > > notifications. Much more will need to follow.
> > >
> > > With regard to the issue of citations, it's worth noting that it's
> > > already possible to _conditionally_ load data from Wikidata, excluding
> > > information that is unsourced or only sourced circularly (i.e. to
> > > Wikipedia itself). [1] Template invocations can also override values
> > > provided by Wikidata, for example, if there is a source, but it is not
> > > considered reliable by the standards of a specific project.
> > >
> > > > If a digital voice assistant propagates a Wikimedia mistake without
> > > telling
> > > > users where it got its information from, then there is not even a
> > > feedback
> > > > form. Editability is of no help at all if people can't find the
> source.
> > >
> > > I'm in favor of always indicating at least provenance (something like
> > > "Here's a quote from Wikipedia:"), even for short excerpts, and I
> > > certainly think WMF and chapters can advocate for this practice.
> > > However, where short excerpts are concerned, it's not at all clear
> > > that there is a _legal_ issue here, and that full compliance with all
> > > requirements of the license is a reasonable "ask".
> > >
> > > Bing's search result page manages a decent compromise, I think: it
> > > shows excerpts from Wikipedia clearly labeled as such, and it links to
> > > the CC-BY-SA license if you expand the excerpt, e.g.:
> > > https://www.bing.com/search?q=france
> > >
> > > I know that over the years, many efforts have been undertaken to
> > > document best practices for re-use, ranging from local
> > > community-created pages to chapter guides and tools like the
> > > "Lizenzhinweisgenerator". I don't know what the best-available of
> > > these is nowadays, but if none exists, it might be a good idea to
> > > develop a new, comprehensive guide that takes into account voice
> > > applications, tabular data, and so on.
> > >
> > > Such a guide would ideally not just be written from a license
> > > compliance perspective, but also include recommendations, e.g., on how
> > > to best indicate provenance, distinguishing "here's what you must do"
> > > from "here's what we recommend".
> > >
> > > >> Wikidata will often provide a shallow first level of information
> about
> > > >> a subject, while other linked sources provide deeper information.
> The
> > > >> more structured the information, the easier it becomes to validate
> in
> > > >> an automatic fashion that, for example, the subset of country
> > > >> population time series data represented in Wikidata is an accurate
> > > >> representation of the source material. Even when a large source
> > > >> dataset is mirrored by Wikimedia (for low-latency visualization,
> say),
> > > >> you can hash it, digitally sign it, and restrict modifiability of
> > > >> copies.
> > >
> > > > Interesting, though I'm not aware of that being done at present.
> > >
> > > At present, Wikidata allows users to model constraints on internal
> > > data validity. These constraints are used for regularly generated
> > > database reports as well as on-demand lookup via
> > > https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:ConstraintReport . This kicks
> > > in, for example, if you put in an insane number in a population field,
> > > or mark a country as female.
> > >
> > > There is a project underway to also validate against external sources;
> > see:
> > >
> > > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase_Quality_
> > > Extensions#Special_Page_Cross-Check_with_external_databases
> > >
> > > Wikidata still tends to deal with relatively small amounts of data; a
> > > highly annotated item like Germany (Q183), for example, comes in at
> > > under 1MB in uncompressed JSON form. Time series data like GDP is
> > > often included only for a single point in time, or for a subset of the
> > > available data. The relatively new "Data:" namespace on Commons exists
> > > to store raw datasets; this is only used to a very limited extent so
> > > far, but there are some examples of how such data can be visualized,
> > > e.g.:
> > >
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Graph:Population_history
> > >
> > > Giving volunteers more powerful tools to select and visualize data
> > > while automating much of the effort of maintaining data integrity
> > > seems like an achievable and strategic goal, and as these examples
> > > show, some building blocks for this are already in place.
> > >
> > > >> But the proprietary knowledge graphs are valuable to users in ways
> > > >> that the previous generation of search engines was not. Interacting
> > > >> with a device like you would with a human being ("Alexa/Google/Siri,
> > > >> is yarrow edible?") makes knowledge more accessible and usable,
> > > >> including to people who have difficulty reading long texts, or who
> are
> > > >> not literate at all. In this sense I don't think WMF should ever
> find
> > > >> itself in the position to argue _against_ inclusion of information
> > > >> from Wikimedia projects in these applications.
> > >
> > > > There is a distinct likelihood that they will make reading Wikipedia
> > > > articles progressively obsolete, just like the availability of
> Googling
> > > has
> > > > dissuaded many people from sitting down and reading a book.
> > >
> > > There is an important distinction between "lookup" and "learning"; the
> > > former is a transactional activity ("Is this country part of the Euro
> > > zone?") and the latter an immersive one ("How did the EU come
> > > about?"). Where we now get instant answers from home assistants or
> > > search engines, we may have previously skimmed, or performed our own
> > > highly optimized search in the local knowledge repository called a
> > > "bookshelf".
> > >
> > > In other words, even if some instant answers lead to a drop in
> > > Wikipedia views, it would be unreasonable to assume that those views
> > > were "reads" rather than "skims". When you're on a purely
> > > transactional journey, you appreciate almost anything that shortens
> > > it.
> > >
> > > I don't think Wikimedia should fight the gravity of a user's
> > > intentions out of its own pedagogical motives. Rather, it should make
> > > both lookup and learning as appealing as possible. Doing well in the
> > > "lookup" category is important to avoid handing too much control off
> > > to gatekeepers, and being good in the "learning" category holds the
> > > greatest promise for lasting positive impact.
> > >
> > > As for the larger social issue, at least in the US, the youngest (most
> > > googley) generation is the one that reads the most books, and
> > > income/education are very strong predictors of whether people do or
> > > not:
> > > http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/19/slightly-
> > > fewer-americans-are-reading-print-books-new-survey-finds/
> > >
> > > >> The applications themselves are not the problem; the centralized
> > > >> gatekeeper control is. Knowledge as an open service (and network) is
> > > >> actually the solution to that root problem. It's how we weaken and
> > > >> perhaps even break the control of the gatekeepers. Your critique
> seems
> > > >> to boil down to "Let's ask Google for more crumbs". In spite of all
> > > >> your anti-corporate social justice rhetoric, that seems to be the
> path
> > > >> to developing a one-sided dependency relationship.
> > >
> > > > I considered that, but in the end felt that given the extent to which
> > > > Google profited from volunteers' work, it wasn't an unfair ask.
> > >
> > > While I think your proposal to ask Google to share access to resources
> > > it already has digitized or licensed is worth considering, I would
> > > suggest being very careful about the long term implications of any
> > > such agreements. Having a single corporation control volunteers'
> > > access to proprietary resources means that such access can also be
> > > used as leverage down the road, or abruptly be taken away for other
> > > reasons.
> > >
> > > I think it would be more interesting to spin off the existing
> > > "Wikipedia Library" into its own international organization (or home
> > > it with an existing one), tasked with giving free knowledge
> > > contributors (including potentially to other free knowledge projects
> > > like OSM) access to proprietary resources, and pursuing public and
> > > private funding of its own. The development of many relationships may
> > > take longer, but it is more sustainable in the long run. Moreover, it
> > > has the potential to lead to powerful collaborations with existing
> > > public/nonprofit digitization and preservation efforts.
> > >
> > > > Publicise the fact that Google and others profit from volunteer work,
> > and
> > > > give very little back. The world could do with more articles like
> this:
> > > >
> > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/
> > > 2015/07/22/you-dont-know-it-but-youre-working-for-facebook-for-free/
> > >
> > > I have plenty of criticisms of Facebook, but the fact that users don't
> > > get paid for posting selfies isn't one of them. My thoughts on how the
> > > free culture movement (not limited to Wikipedia) should interface with
> > > the for-profit sector are as follows, FWIW:
> > >
> > > 1) Demand appropriate levels of taxation on private profits, [2]
> > > sufficient investments in public education and cultural institutions,
> > > and "open licensing" requirements on government contracts with private
> > > corporations.
> > >
> > > 2) Require compliance with free licenses, first gently, then more
> > > firmly. This is a game of diminishing returns, and it's most useful to
> > > go after the most blatant and problematic cases. As noted above, "fair
> > > use" limits should be understood and taken into consideration.
> > >
> > > 3) Encourage corporations to be "good citizens" of the free culture
> > > world, whether it's through indicating provenance beyond what's
> > > legally required, or by contributing directly (open source
> > > development, knowledge/data donations, in-kind goods/services,
> > > financial contributions). The payoff for them is goodwill and a
> > > thriving (i.e. also profitable) open Internet that more people in more
> > > places use for more things.
> > >
> > > 4) Build community-driven, open, nonprofit alternatives to
> > > out-of-control corporate quasi-monopolies. As far as proprietary
> > > knowledge graphs are concerned, I will reiterate: open data is the
> > > solution, not the problem.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Erik
> > >
> > > [1] See the getValue function in
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:WikidataIB , specifically its
> > > "onlysourced" parameter. The module also adds a convenient "Edit this
> > > on Wikidata" link to each claim included from there.
> > >
> > > [2] As far as Wikimedia organizations are concerned, specific tax
> > > policy will likely always be out of scope of political advocacy, but
> > > the other points need not be.
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > > wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Katherine Maher
> > Executive Director
> >
> > *We moved! **Our new address:*
> >
> > Wikimedia Foundation
> > 1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600
> > San Francisco, CA 94104
> >
> > +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
> > +1 (415) 712 4873
> > kmaher@wikimedia.org
> > https://annual.wikimedia.org
> > _______________________________________________
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25) [ In reply to ]
I feel much the same as Lodewijk, though it is possible that we differ in detail. As he says the document is rather vague and open to divergent interpretation after the fact.
Cheers,
Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Lodewijk
Sent: Friday, 20 October 2017 7:51 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

Thanks for the response, Katherine. I'm a little concerned that we can have such "vastly different" interpretations of the same text. I tried to get some Wikimedians to give me their take-away, and have not gotten a consistent direction from those.

What I mostly remember after reading your response is that Wikimedia would be doing more of the same, and more.

This is a two-folded concern for me. On one hand, it feels like the direction is too multi-interpretable. While vagueness and leaving specifics open is only natural, I do believe that a clear direction is essential to take the next steps.

Second, after reading your response I'm left with the feeling that we don't really take a direction. Choosing a direction is also determining what not to do. This was also a main criticism of the earlier version presented at Wikimania. Directions are painful, because we're not satisfying everyone.

Currently, the WMF is asking people and affiliates to 'endorse' this text.
It has a high textual quality and says a number of things that resonate with my ideals and those that I know to be Wikimedia's ideals. However, I don't feel it provides the direction we need yet. I'm not keen on endorsing a direction, which may then be interpreted in a vastly different way.

I should also note: I have little hope of changing the process. And it may very well be that I'm alone in this concern. But I would suggest that you
(plural) select 25 (or more) random Wikimedians that were not intimately involved with the strategic process, let them read the direction, and let them summarize their take-aways. (that is working from the assumption you have not done so already) If their variance is too large, that may be an indicator that unfortunately another cycle of labor may be needed before we can enter the next round. Given all effort and resources that have been invested in this process, such sanity check may be worth while.

Warmly,

Lodewijk

ps: just to state the obvious: I'm highly appreciative of all the work that went into this. It could have turned out worse in many many ways, and I appreciate all the efforts that went into involving the community. I'm always feeling guilty about not having been able to spend way more time on the strategic process than I did in all the various steps of the process - such rebut would be totally fair :).

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Katherine Maher <kmaher@wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Sorry for the delay in chiming in. It's been a busy few weeks, and
> while I haven't made a public update about strategy in a while, work
> has been continuing! We've now closed Phase 1, and we're heading into
> Phase 2, in which our objective is to start thinking about how we make
> the strategic direction into a plan of action and implementation. It's
> an opportunity to create greater clarity about how we each understand
> the direction, how we might set goals against it, what we may need to
> change to achieve these goals, and how we can contribute -- as
> projects, communities, and individuals. I’ll be sending my next weekly
> update shortly but I wanted to acknowledge the contributions in this thread first.
>
> I've read through this entire thread, and I've agreed, disagreed,
> agreed again, and started emails only to see new ones come in and have
> to scrap my drafts. While I found myself often agreeing with Erik, I
> dig the challenges you all have put forward and appreciate the
> diversity of opinions. Some of our differences stem from the unique
> contexts of the groups and individuals responding and will result in
> differences in implementation in each community. Other differences,
> such as questioning the very concept of source credibility, will
> certainly require additional discussion. But regardless of where we
> end up, it has been a delight to follow such a rich, substantive
> conversation. This has been one of the best, and most
> thought-provoking, Wikimedia-l threads I've read in some time, and I
> hope that it is the first of many as we go into Phase 2 of the movement strategy process.
>
> A few more responses inline:
>
> 2017-10-04 11:19 GMT-07:00 Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org>:
> >
> > I don't understand what exactly that direction is headed towards,
> > there
> is
> > too much space for a variety of interpretation. The one thing that I
> > take away though, is that we won't place ourselves at the center of
> > the free knowledge universe (as a brand), but want to become a
> > service. We don't expect people to know about 'Wikipedia' in 10
> > years, but we do want that our work is being put to good use.
>
> It's always helpful to read critique as a challenge to our logical
> assumptions. Lodewijk, I see where your interpretation comes from
> here, but it is vastly different than how I interpret from this
> statement. To the contrary, I wouldn’t say "service" and "brand" are
> mutually exclusive. I do think that Wikimedia should want to continue
> to be known as a destination for free knowledge, and we do want to
> increase brand awareness, especially in areas and contexts where we
> are not yet well (or not at all) known. Our brand (including our
> communities) and visibility are some of our most valuable assets as a
> movement, and it would be strategically unwise not to build on them for long-term planning.
>
> When I think about knowledge as a service, it means that we want this,
> *and much more*. It’s additive. We want to be who we are today, *and*
> we want to provide a service to other institutions. We want to use
> that brand and visibility to work with others in the ecosystem. We
> also want to be present in new experiences and delivery channels, in
> order to preserve the direct interface connection with Wikipedia's
> contributors and readers that we have on the web. I see this as
> essential - for our readers, it's about ensuring a core promise: that
> the chain of evidence for the information they seek is unbroken and
> transparent, from citation to edit. For our contributors, it's about extending ways to contribute as our digital interfaces evolve.
>
> We know from the Phase 1 research that many readers see Wikipedia as a
> utility, whether we like it or not. We know that people reuse our
> content in many contexts. My interpretation of “knowledge as a
> service” is not that we vanish into the background, but that we become
> ever more essential to people's lives. And part of our doing so is not
> only enriching the experience people have on Wikipedia, but investing
> in how Wikipedia can promote the opening of knowledge overall. Today,
> MediaWiki and Wikibase are already infrastructures that serve other
> free knowledge projects, in turn enriching the material on which our
> projects can draw. What more could we do if we supported openness more systemically?
>
> I understand that the direction may still feel too vague. A direction
> for the 2030 horizon is bound to lack specifics. I actually think this is okay.
> The direction comes from a small-ish group of drafters trying to make
> sense of 8 months of thousands of perspectives. In that sense, a small
> group can only do so much. It is now our responsibility, as movement
> actors, to take this direction and interpret it in our respective
> contexts, based on our respective experiences. This will be a major
> part of Phase 2 of the movement discussions.
>
> 2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com>:
> >
> > With an eye to 2030 and WMF's long-term direction, I do think it's
> > worth thinking about Wikidata's centrality, and I would agree with
> > you at least that the phrase "the essential infrastructure of the
> > ecosystem" does overstate what I think WMF should aspire to (the
> > "essential infrastructure" should consist of many open components
> > maintained by different groups).
>
> There is indeed an element of aspiration in that phrase. I knew it
> would be controversial, and we talked about it quite a bit in
> drafting, but advocated that we include it anyway. After all, our
> vision statement is "a world in which every single human can freely
> share in the sum of all knowledge." That's certainly inclusive (it has
> no single parties or
> ownership) but it is also wildly aspirational. But despite the
> impossibility of our that aspiration, it has worked quite well: we've
> made great strides toward a project that is "impossible in theory".
>
> For each person who felt we should moderate the language of the
> direction, there was another who wanted us to be more bold and
> recapture this ambition. They wanted us to believe in ourselves, and
> give the world something to believe in. As Wikimedians, we tend to
> prefer matter-of-fact, sometimes plain and noncommittal statements.
> While that works well for NPOV content, a strategic direction also
> seeks to inspire ambitious efforts. The drafting group removed much of
> the flowery language from the earlier versions of the draft, but the
> goal was to keep just enough to inspire movement actors and external partners.
>
> 2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com>:
> >
> > Wikidata in particular is best seen not as the singular source of
> > truth, but as an important hub in a network of open data providers
> > -- primarily governments, public institutions, nonprofits. This is
> > consistent with recent developments around Wikidata such as query
> > federation.
>
> Personally, I couldn’t agree more. I see federated structured data as
> an inevitable (and very favorable) outcome of the concept of a
> service-based model. Distribution enables greater flexibility in
> implementation and customization across the network while improving
> the resilience of the whole system. This is true in terms of technical
> stability, political influence or censorship, and breadth and depth of
> content. If one starts to understand Wikidata as a project, and
> Wikibase as a platform, we start to really be able to see how a
> broader adoption of open structures and attribution models can only enrich and increase the open ecosystem overall.
>
> I also think the Wikidata model is one that has been working very well
> and one that others in our ecosystem could benefit from. Today, on our
> newest Wikimedia project, we work with governments, the private
> sector, and individual community members, in largely constructive
> ways. And in many cases, the very existence of Wikidata makes it
> possible for these institutions to be open, when they would otherwise
> lack the expertise or resources to build their own open data infrastructure.
>
> For me, “Knowledge as a service” means supporting those institutions
> by providing the infrastructure that they can use for this purpose,
> and also accompanying them through the social and institutional
> changes that come with opening data and freeing knowledge. That
> infrastructure could be Wikidata, it could be other Wikimedia
> projects, or it could be other Wikibase instances, depending on what
> makes the most sense for each context.
>
> Anyway, there's a lot more to discuss, and thank you all again for
> these excellent conversations!
>
> I know that some folks were wondering about all the consultation
> comments about features, interfaces, and product improvements that
> didn't get incorporated into the strategy. We knew from the beginning
> of the processes that we'd certainly get quite a few of these requests
> that were too specific to be integrated into long-term strategic
> thinking and planned accordingly to document them. The goal was to
> consider how they might be taken up by either Foundation staff or
> interested volunteer developers. As a result, we're publishing a
> “Features report” written by Suzie Nussel that summarizes these
> requests, and should be a useful starting point for specific improvements that could be addressed in the shorter term.
>
> See you soon with the next strategy update.
>
> Katherine
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 8:01 AM, Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 7:31 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > Wikidata has its own problems in that regard that have triggered
> ongoing
> > > discussions and concerns on the English Wikipedia.[1]
> >
> > Tensions between different communities with overlapping but
> > non-identical objectives are unavoidable. Repository projects like
> > Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons provide huge payoff: they
> > dramatically reduce duplication of effort, enable small language
> > communities to benefit from the work done internationally, and can
> > tackle a more expansive scope than the immediate needs of existing
> > projects. A few examples include:
> >
> > - Wiki Loves Monuments, recognized as the world's largest photo
> competition
> > - Partnerships with countless galleries, libraries, archives, and
> > museums
> > - Wikidata initiatives like mySociety's "Everypolitician" project or
> > Gene Wiki
> >
> > This is not without its costs, however. Differing policies, levels
> > of maturity, and social expectations will always fuel some level of
> > conflict, and the repository approach creates huge usability
> > challenges. The latter is also true for internal wiki features like
> > templates, which shift information out of the article space,
> > disempowering users who no longer understand how the whole is
> > constructed from its parts.
> >
> > I would call these usability and "legibility" issues the single
> > biggest challenge in the development of Wikidata, Structured Data
> > for Commons, and other repository functionality. Much related work
> > has already been done or is ticketed in Phabricator, such as the
> > effective propagation of changes into watchlists, article histories,
> > and notifications. Much more will need to follow.
> >
> > With regard to the issue of citations, it's worth noting that it's
> > already possible to _conditionally_ load data from Wikidata,
> > excluding information that is unsourced or only sourced circularly
> > (i.e. to Wikipedia itself). [1] Template invocations can also
> > override values provided by Wikidata, for example, if there is a
> > source, but it is not considered reliable by the standards of a specific project.
> >
> > > If a digital voice assistant propagates a Wikimedia mistake
> > > without
> > telling
> > > users where it got its information from, then there is not even a
> > feedback
> > > form. Editability is of no help at all if people can't find the source.
> >
> > I'm in favor of always indicating at least provenance (something
> > like "Here's a quote from Wikipedia:"), even for short excerpts, and
> > I certainly think WMF and chapters can advocate for this practice.
> > However, where short excerpts are concerned, it's not at all clear
> > that there is a _legal_ issue here, and that full compliance with
> > all requirements of the license is a reasonable "ask".
> >
> > Bing's search result page manages a decent compromise, I think: it
> > shows excerpts from Wikipedia clearly labeled as such, and it links
> > to the CC-BY-SA license if you expand the excerpt, e.g.:
> > https://www.bing.com/search?q=france
> >
> > I know that over the years, many efforts have been undertaken to
> > document best practices for re-use, ranging from local
> > community-created pages to chapter guides and tools like the
> > "Lizenzhinweisgenerator". I don't know what the best-available of
> > these is nowadays, but if none exists, it might be a good idea to
> > develop a new, comprehensive guide that takes into account voice
> > applications, tabular data, and so on.
> >
> > Such a guide would ideally not just be written from a license
> > compliance perspective, but also include recommendations, e.g., on
> > how to best indicate provenance, distinguishing "here's what you must do"
> > from "here's what we recommend".
> >
> > >> Wikidata will often provide a shallow first level of information
> > >> about a subject, while other linked sources provide deeper
> > >> information. The more structured the information, the easier it
> > >> becomes to validate in an automatic fashion that, for example,
> > >> the subset of country population time series data represented in
> > >> Wikidata is an accurate representation of the source material.
> > >> Even when a large source dataset is mirrored by Wikimedia (for
> > >> low-latency visualization, say), you can hash it, digitally sign
> > >> it, and restrict modifiability of copies.
> >
> > > Interesting, though I'm not aware of that being done at present.
> >
> > At present, Wikidata allows users to model constraints on internal
> > data validity. These constraints are used for regularly generated
> > database reports as well as on-demand lookup via
> > https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:ConstraintReport . This kicks
> > in, for example, if you put in an insane number in a population
> > field, or mark a country as female.
> >
> > There is a project underway to also validate against external
> > sources;
> see:
> >
> > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase_Quality_
> > Extensions#Special_Page_Cross-Check_with_external_databases
> >
> > Wikidata still tends to deal with relatively small amounts of data;
> > a highly annotated item like Germany (Q183), for example, comes in
> > at under 1MB in uncompressed JSON form. Time series data like GDP is
> > often included only for a single point in time, or for a subset of
> > the available data. The relatively new "Data:" namespace on Commons
> > exists to store raw datasets; this is only used to a very limited
> > extent so far, but there are some examples of how such data can be
> > visualized,
> > e.g.:
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Graph:Population_history
> >
> > Giving volunteers more powerful tools to select and visualize data
> > while automating much of the effort of maintaining data integrity
> > seems like an achievable and strategic goal, and as these examples
> > show, some building blocks for this are already in place.
> >
> > >> But the proprietary knowledge graphs are valuable to users in
> > >> ways that the previous generation of search engines was not.
> > >> Interacting with a device like you would with a human being
> > >> ("Alexa/Google/Siri, is yarrow edible?") makes knowledge more
> > >> accessible and usable, including to people who have difficulty
> > >> reading long texts, or who are not literate at all. In this sense
> > >> I don't think WMF should ever find itself in the position to
> > >> argue _against_ inclusion of information from Wikimedia projects in these applications.
> >
> > > There is a distinct likelihood that they will make reading
> > > Wikipedia articles progressively obsolete, just like the
> > > availability of Googling
> > has
> > > dissuaded many people from sitting down and reading a book.
> >
> > There is an important distinction between "lookup" and "learning";
> > the former is a transactional activity ("Is this country part of the
> > Euro
> > zone?") and the latter an immersive one ("How did the EU come
> > about?"). Where we now get instant answers from home assistants or
> > search engines, we may have previously skimmed, or performed our own
> > highly optimized search in the local knowledge repository called a
> > "bookshelf".
> >
> > In other words, even if some instant answers lead to a drop in
> > Wikipedia views, it would be unreasonable to assume that those views
> > were "reads" rather than "skims". When you're on a purely
> > transactional journey, you appreciate almost anything that shortens
> > it.
> >
> > I don't think Wikimedia should fight the gravity of a user's
> > intentions out of its own pedagogical motives. Rather, it should
> > make both lookup and learning as appealing as possible. Doing well
> > in the "lookup" category is important to avoid handing too much
> > control off to gatekeepers, and being good in the "learning"
> > category holds the greatest promise for lasting positive impact.
> >
> > As for the larger social issue, at least in the US, the youngest
> > (most
> > googley) generation is the one that reads the most books, and
> > income/education are very strong predictors of whether people do or
> > not:
> > http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/19/slightly-
> > fewer-americans-are-reading-print-books-new-survey-finds/
> >
> > >> The applications themselves are not the problem; the centralized
> > >> gatekeeper control is. Knowledge as an open service (and network)
> > >> is actually the solution to that root problem. It's how we weaken
> > >> and perhaps even break the control of the gatekeepers. Your
> > >> critique seems to boil down to "Let's ask Google for more
> > >> crumbs". In spite of all your anti-corporate social justice
> > >> rhetoric, that seems to be the path to developing a one-sided dependency relationship.
> >
> > > I considered that, but in the end felt that given the extent to
> > > which Google profited from volunteers' work, it wasn't an unfair ask.
> >
> > While I think your proposal to ask Google to share access to
> > resources it already has digitized or licensed is worth considering,
> > I would suggest being very careful about the long term implications
> > of any such agreements. Having a single corporation control volunteers'
> > access to proprietary resources means that such access can also be
> > used as leverage down the road, or abruptly be taken away for other
> > reasons.
> >
> > I think it would be more interesting to spin off the existing
> > "Wikipedia Library" into its own international organization (or home
> > it with an existing one), tasked with giving free knowledge
> > contributors (including potentially to other free knowledge projects
> > like OSM) access to proprietary resources, and pursuing public and
> > private funding of its own. The development of many relationships
> > may take longer, but it is more sustainable in the long run.
> > Moreover, it has the potential to lead to powerful collaborations
> > with existing public/nonprofit digitization and preservation efforts.
> >
> > > Publicise the fact that Google and others profit from volunteer
> > > work,
> and
> > > give very little back. The world could do with more articles like this:
> > >
> > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/
> > 2015/07/22/you-dont-know-it-but-youre-working-for-facebook-for-free/
> >
> > I have plenty of criticisms of Facebook, but the fact that users
> > don't get paid for posting selfies isn't one of them. My thoughts on
> > how the free culture movement (not limited to Wikipedia) should
> > interface with the for-profit sector are as follows, FWIW:
> >
> > 1) Demand appropriate levels of taxation on private profits, [2]
> > sufficient investments in public education and cultural
> > institutions, and "open licensing" requirements on government
> > contracts with private corporations.
> >
> > 2) Require compliance with free licenses, first gently, then more
> > firmly. This is a game of diminishing returns, and it's most useful
> > to go after the most blatant and problematic cases. As noted above,
> > "fair use" limits should be understood and taken into consideration.
> >
> > 3) Encourage corporations to be "good citizens" of the free culture
> > world, whether it's through indicating provenance beyond what's
> > legally required, or by contributing directly (open source
> > development, knowledge/data donations, in-kind goods/services,
> > financial contributions). The payoff for them is goodwill and a
> > thriving (i.e. also profitable) open Internet that more people in
> > more places use for more things.
> >
> > 4) Build community-driven, open, nonprofit alternatives to
> > out-of-control corporate quasi-monopolies. As far as proprietary
> > knowledge graphs are concerned, I will reiterate: open data is the
> > solution, not the problem.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Erik
> >
> > [1] See the getValue function in
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:WikidataIB , specifically its
> > "onlysourced" parameter. The module also adds a convenient "Edit
> > this on Wikidata" link to each claim included from there.
> >
> > [2] As far as Wikimedia organizations are concerned, specific tax
> > policy will likely always be out of scope of political advocacy, but
> > the other points need not be.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Unsubscribe:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Katherine Maher
> Executive Director
>
> *We moved! **Our new address:*
>
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600
> San Francisco, CA 94104
>
> +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25) [ In reply to ]
Hi Erik,

More good points here.


On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 7:01 AM, Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> With regard to the issue of citations, it's worth noting that it's
> already possible to _conditionally_ load data from Wikidata, excluding
> information that is unsourced or only sourced circularly (i.e. to
> Wikipedia itself). [1] Template invocations can also override values
> provided by Wikidata, for example, if there is a source, but it is not
> considered reliable by the standards of a specific project.
>


That is useful.



> > If a digital voice assistant propagates a Wikimedia mistake without
> telling
> > users where it got its information from, then there is not even a
> feedback
> > form. Editability is of no help at all if people can't find the source.
>
> I'm in favor of always indicating at least provenance (something like
> "Here's a quote from Wikipedia:"), even for short excerpts, and I
> certainly think WMF and chapters can advocate for this practice.
> However, where short excerpts are concerned, it's not at all clear
> that there is a _legal_ issue here, and that full compliance with all
> requirements of the license is a reasonable "ask".
>


I think it would be good to do some legal work to gain that clarity. The
Amazon Echo issue, with the Echo potentially using millions of words from
Wikipedia without any kind of attribution and indication of provenance at
all, was raised on this list in July for example.

We were promised an update here on this list months ago, but no such update
has come to date. If CC-BY-SA is not enforced, Wikipedia will stealthily
shift to CC-0 in practice. I don't think that's desirable.



> Bing's search result page manages a decent compromise, I think: it
> shows excerpts from Wikipedia clearly labeled as such, and it links to
> the CC-BY-SA license if you expand the excerpt, e.g.:
> https://www.bing.com/search?q=france



I agree: Bing's solution is excellent. It provides attribution and
indicates provenance, in a manner that is reasonable based on the medium,
means and context in which the licensed material is shared, which is
literally all the licence requires.



> I know that over the years, many efforts have been undertaken to
> document best practices for re-use, ranging from local
> community-created pages to chapter guides and tools like the
> "Lizenzhinweisgenerator". I don't know what the best-available of
> these is nowadays, but if none exists, it might be a good idea to
> develop a new, comprehensive guide that takes into account voice
> applications, tabular data, and so on.
>
> Such a guide would ideally not just be written from a license
> compliance perspective, but also include recommendations, e.g., on how
> to best indicate provenance, distinguishing "here's what you must do"
> from "here's what we recommend".
>


Agreed. Ideally this should be complemented by a public list indicating
which providers are following the recommendations.



> There is an important distinction between "lookup" and "learning"; the
> former is a transactional activity ("Is this country part of the Euro
> zone?") and the latter an immersive one ("How did the EU come
> about?"). Where we now get instant answers from home assistants or
> search engines, we may have previously skimmed, or performed our own
> highly optimized search in the local knowledge repository called a
> "bookshelf".
>


An interesting question to me is whether, with the explosion of information
available, people will spend so much time with transactional queries across
a large number of diverse topics that there is little time left for
immersive, in-depth learning of any one of them, and how that might
gradually change the type of knowledge people possess (information
overload).

Even today, political commentators are deploring that people are making
decisions on the basis of gut reactions and snippets – isolated bits of
information that have an emotional hook, but are stripped of wider context.
There seems to be fairly wide agreement that there is at least a potential
for negative consequences, as well as positive ones.

The growth in digital assistants could conceivably have a large impact
here, because a digital assistant can only answer the questions people ask
– and sometimes more background knowledge is needed to actually know what
questions to ask.

All of these effects are hard to predict, but it seems safe to say that, as
with any other structural change of this sort, there will be upsides and
downsides.



> In other words, even if some instant answers lead to a drop in
> Wikipedia views, it would be unreasonable to assume that those views
> were "reads" rather than "skims". When you're on a purely
> transactional journey, you appreciate almost anything that shortens
> it.
>


Absolutely true, and judging by myself – most of my own journeys on
Wikipedia.org are transactional – the number of page views corresponding to
someone actually reading a Wikipedia article from beginning to end is
probably tiny. (Oddly enough, I am more likely to read a Wikipedia article
from beginning to end if I'm looking something up on the Kindle, while I'm
reading a book.)



> I don't think Wikimedia should fight the gravity of a user's
> intentions out of its own pedagogical motives. Rather, it should make
> both lookup and learning as appealing as possible. Doing well in the
> "lookup" category is important to avoid handing too much control off
> to gatekeepers, and being good in the "learning" category holds the
> greatest promise for lasting positive impact.
>
> As for the larger social issue, at least in the US, the youngest (most
> googley) generation is the one that reads the most books, and
> income/education are very strong predictors of whether people do or
> not:
> http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/19/slightly-
> fewer-americans-are-reading-print-books-new-survey-finds/



Interesting. I'm wondering whether those are primarily fiction or
non-fiction – unfortunately, the report remains silent on that.



> While I think your proposal to ask Google to share access to resources
> it already has digitized or licensed is worth considering, I would
> suggest being very careful about the long term implications of any
> such agreements. Having a single corporation control volunteers'
> access to proprietary resources means that such access can also be
> used as leverage down the road, or abruptly be taken away for other
> reasons.
>
> I think it would be more interesting to spin off the existing
> "Wikipedia Library" into its own international organization (or home
> it with an existing one), tasked with giving free knowledge
> contributors (including potentially to other free knowledge projects
> like OSM) access to proprietary resources, and pursuing public and
> private funding of its own. The development of many relationships may
> take longer, but it is more sustainable in the long run. Moreover, it
> has the potential to lead to powerful collaborations with existing
> public/nonprofit digitization and preservation efforts.
>


I think that's a really excellent idea. I'd love to see that go further
than this mailing list discussion.



> > Publicise the fact that Google and others profit from volunteer work, and
> > give very little back. The world could do with more articles like this:
> >
> > https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/
> 2015/07/22/you-dont-know-it-but-youre-working-for-facebook-for-free/
>
> I have plenty of criticisms of Facebook, but the fact that users don't
> get paid for posting selfies isn't one of them.



While the headline focused on Facebook, a large part of the article was
about Wikipedia, and expressed a worthwhile perspective.



> My thoughts on how the
> free culture movement (not limited to Wikipedia) should interface with
> the for-profit sector are as follows, FWIW:
>
> 1) Demand appropriate levels of taxation on private profits, [2]
> sufficient investments in public education and cultural institutions,
> and "open licensing" requirements on government contracts with private
> corporations.
>
> 2) Require compliance with free licenses, first gently, then more
> firmly. This is a game of diminishing returns, and it's most useful to
> go after the most blatant and problematic cases. As noted above, "fair
> use" limits should be understood and taken into consideration.
>
> 3) Encourage corporations to be "good citizens" of the free culture
> world, whether it's through indicating provenance beyond what's
> legally required, or by contributing directly (open source
> development, knowledge/data donations, in-kind goods/services,
> financial contributions). The payoff for them is goodwill and a
> thriving (i.e. also profitable) open Internet that more people in more
> places use for more things.
>
> 4) Build community-driven, open, nonprofit alternatives to
> out-of-control corporate quasi-monopolies. As far as proprietary
> knowledge graphs are concerned, I will reiterate: open data is the
> solution, not the problem.
>


I entirely agree with points 1 to 3 – though getting the likes of Google to
pay more taxes may not be very realistic, as they have lots of money (a
good chunk of it earned through Wikimedia content ...) to spend on lobbying
against such changes.[1] For point 4 I would add the caveat that open data
can both be a solution and create its own specific kind of problems.

Since we last discussed this, I've come across a great research paper on
Meta, "Considering 2030: Future technology trends that will impact the
Wikimedia movement", prepared for WMF by independent consultants Dot
Connector Studio (Philadelphia) and Lutman & Associates (St Paul):

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Sources/Considering_2030:_Future_technology_trends_that_will_impact_the_Wikimedia_movement

The sections "Things to keep in mind" and "Questions for the Wikimedia
movement to consider" most closely reflect my own concerns.

Unfortunately, little or none of that has made it into the Direction
statement, as risks to guard against. An attempt was made to include some
of these caveats in the Direction's Appendix (Pattern 19), but that work
wasn't completed, and the Appendix now seems to have been abandoned (it
hasn't been edited by WMF staff in months).

Is the Appendix even still part of the Direction?

Best,
Andreas

[1]
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/30/google-silicon-valley-corporate-lobbying-washington-dc-politics



> [1] See the getValue function in
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:WikidataIB , specifically its
> "onlysourced" parameter. The module also adds a convenient "Edit this
> on Wikidata" link to each claim included from there.
>
> [2] As far as Wikimedia organizations are concerned, specific tax
> policy will likely always be out of scope of political advocacy, but
> the other points need not be.
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25) [ In reply to ]
Hi Katherine,


On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 6:13 PM, Katherine Maher <kmaher@wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> 2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com>:
> >
> > With an eye to 2030 and WMF's long-term direction, I do think it's
> > worth thinking about Wikidata's centrality, and I would agree with you
> > at least that the phrase "the essential infrastructure of the
> > ecosystem" does overstate what I think WMF should aspire to (the
> > "essential infrastructure" should consist of many open components
> > maintained by different groups).
>
> There is indeed an element of aspiration in that phrase. I knew it would be
> controversial, and we talked about it quite a bit in drafting, but
> advocated that we include it anyway. After all, our vision statement is "a
> world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all
> knowledge." That's certainly inclusive (it has no single parties or
> ownership) but it is also wildly aspirational. But despite the
> impossibility of our that aspiration, it has worked quite well: we've made
> great strides toward a project that is "impossible in theory".
>


Indeed, Wikipedia has become more influential than anyone thought likely
ten years ago.



> For each person who felt we should moderate the language of the direction,
> there was another who wanted us to be more bold and recapture this
> ambition. They wanted us to believe in ourselves, and give the world
> something to believe in. As Wikimedians, we tend to prefer matter-of-fact,
> sometimes plain and noncommittal statements. While that works well for NPOV
> content, a strategic direction also seeks to inspire ambitious efforts. The
> drafting group removed much of the flowery language from the earlier
> versions of the draft, but the goal was to keep just enough to inspire
> movement actors and external partners.



I understand the psychology of stretch goals, but I'd still say that some
goals are not worth aspiring towards.

It's in the nature of the human mind to be vulnerable to ambitions for
world domination. That vulnerability is well encapsulated in the jocular
saying "Power corrupts, but absolute power is kinda cool."

Ultimately, whenever idealists have achieved such absolute domination, the
systems they established were eventually used to some ends that were
anything but cool. Checks and balances are key to a healthy system.

Best,
Andreas
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25) [ In reply to ]
On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 12:51 AM, James Salsman <jsalsman@gmail.com> wrote:
> Erik,
>
> Should interactive web, internet of things, or offline services
> relying on Foundation encyclopedia CC-BY-SA content be required to
> attribute authorship by specifying the revision date from which the
> transluded content is derived?

James -

I don't think there's a sufficiently strong justification for
modifying the manner of attribution specified in the "Terms of Use",
which in any case would only apply to re-use of future revisions of
CC-BY-SA/CC-BY content that's not also exempted by "fair use".

As a best practice, I do believe including timestamp or version
information is helpful both for re-users themselves and for end users.
[[Progressive disclosure]] keeps such information manageable. In my
own re-use of CC-0 data from Wikidata, Open Library and similar
sources, I do include timestamp information along with the source.
Example re-use from Wikidata:
https://lib.reviews/static/uploads/last-sync.png

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25) [ In reply to ]
On Sat, Oct 21, 2017 at 4:11 AM, Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 12:51 AM, James Salsman <jsalsman@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Should interactive web, internet of things, or offline services
>> relying on Foundation encyclopedia CC-BY-SA content be required to
>> attribute authorship by specifying the revision date from which the
>> transluded content is derived?

> I don't think there's a sufficiently strong justification for
> modifying the manner of attribution specified in the "Terms of Use",

If the requirement to attribute "Through a list of all authors" when
hyperlinking isn't possible, such as with read-only displays or audio
output, were replaced with requiring to say that the content is from a
Wikipedia article with a given title and date, that would certainly
give more information about the actual authorship than a list of
mostly pseudonyms.

> which in any case would only apply to re-use of future revisions of
> CC-BY-SA/CC-BY content that's not also exempted by "fair use".

I don't think it would be difficult to convince content reusers to go
along with that. It would protect them against liability from hoaxes,
provide actual attribution information for those who want or need it,
and 30 years down the road when free license grants start expiring....

> As a best practice, I do believe including timestamp or version
> information is helpful both for re-users themselves and for end users.
> [[Progressive disclosure]] keeps such information manageable. In my
> own re-use of CC-0 data from Wikidata, Open Library and similar
> sources, I do include timestamp information along with the source.
> Example re-use from Wikidata:
> https://lib.reviews/static/uploads/last-sync.png

If only our brand ambassadors were as interested in best practices! I
know they are, and once fundraising season rolls around there's going
to be the usual press barrage of interviews. Let's give them something
good to say so that would-be editors know we're the kind of people who
want to protect them from unattributed hoaxes.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25) [ In reply to ]
On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 5:56 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think it would be good to do some legal work to gain that clarity. The
> Amazon Echo issue, with the Echo potentially using millions of words from
> Wikipedia without any kind of attribution and indication of provenance at
> all, was raised on this list in July for example.

There is some basic attribution in the Alexa app (which keeps a log of
all transactions). As I said, I don't see a reason not to include
basic attribution in the voice response as well, but it still seems
worth pointing out. Here's what it looks like in the app (yup, it
really does say "Image: Wikipedia", which is all too typical):

https://imgur.com/a/vchAl

I'm all in favor of a legal opinion on bulk use of introductory
snippets from Wikimedia articles without attribution/license
statement. While I'm obviously not a lawyer, I do, however, sincerely
doubt that it would give you the clarity you seek, given the extremely
unusual nature of authorship of Wikipedia, and the unusual nature of
the re-use. I suspect that such clarity would result only from legal
action, which I would consider to be extremely ill-advised, and which
WMF almost certainly lacks standing to pursue on its own.

> If CC-BY-SA is not enforced, Wikipedia will stealthily
> shift to CC-0 in practice. I don't think that's desirable.

Regardless of the legal issue, I agree that nudging re-users to
attribute content is useful to reinforce the concept that such
attribution goes with re-use. Even with CC-0, showing
providence/citations is a good idea.

> An interesting question to me is whether, with the explosion of information
> available, people will spend so much time with transactional queries across
> a large number of diverse topics that there is little time left for
> immersive, in-depth learning of any one of them, and how that might
> gradually change the type of knowledge people possess (information
> overload).

It's a fair question; the Internet has certainly pushed our ability to
externalize knowledge into overdrive. Perhaps we've already passed the
point where this is a difference in kind, rather than a difference in
degree, compared with how we've shared knowledge in the past; if
[[Neuralink]] doesn't turn out to be vaporware, it may push us over
that edge. :P

That said, people have to acquire specialized domain knowledge to make
a living, and the explosive growth of many immersive learning
platforms (course platforms like edX, Coursera, Udacity; language
learning tools like Duolingo; the vast educational YouTube community,
etc.) suggests that there is a very large demand. While I share some
of your concerns about the role of for-profit gatekeepers to
knowledge, I am not genuinely worried that the availability of
transactional "instant answers" will quench our innate thirst for
knowledge or our need to develop new skills.

I'm most concerned about information systems that deliver highly
effective emotional "hits" and are therefore more habit-forming and
appealing than Wikipedia, Google, or a good book. The negative effect
of high early childhood TV use on attention is well-documented, and
excessive use of social media (which are continuously optimized to be
habit-forming) may have similar effects. Alarmist "Facebook is more
addictive than crack" headlines aside, the reality is that social
media are great delivery vehicles for the kinds of little rewards that
keep you coming back.

In this competition for attention, Wikipedia articles, especially in
STEM topics, have a well-deserved reputation of often being nearly
impenetrable for people not already familiar with a given domain.
While we will never be able to reach everyone, we should be able to
reach people who _want_ to learn but have a hard time staying focused
enough to do so, due to a very low frustration tolerance.

I think one way to bottom line any Wikimedia strategy is to ask
whether it results in people getting better learning experiences,
through WMF's sites or through affiliates and partners. Personally, I
think the long term focus on "knowledge as a service" and "knowledge
equity" is right on target, but it's also useful to explicitly think
about good old Wikipedia and how it might benefit directly. Here are
some things that I think might help develop better learning
experiences on Wikipedia:

- a next generation templating system optimized for data exploration,
timelines, etc., with greater separation of design, code, data and
text
- better support for writing/finding articles that target different
audiences (beginners/experts)
- tech standards and requirements for embedding rich, interactive
"explorable explanations" beyond what any template system can do
- commissioned illustrations or animations for highly complex topics
(possibly organized through another nonprofit)
- assessment partnerships with external groups to verify that learners
get what they need from a given resource

In practice, this could translate to:

- beautiful animations illustrating concepts like the immune system,
the Big Bang, or the inner workings of different engine types
- custom interactive explanations for concepts in statistics or
mathematics, such as the ones in
http://students.brown.edu/seeing-theory/
- code that you can interact with in articles _about_ code like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksort
- highly visual explorables for topics that benefit from it -- Thedore
Grey's award-winning "Elements" app is a nice example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FesjAdIWBk
- better ways to go from one article to the next: data visualizations,
topic maps, dynamic lists, etc.

The reason I think this matches well with what's stated in the
strategy is that it's clear that Wikimedia cannot do it alone. Many
interactive applications will require the kind of open data platform
that Wikidata will hopefully become. Revision metadata APIs (with some
form of write access) may make it easier for folks to help with the
assessment of content quality.

The international education space (schools, colleges, unis) may often
seem intractable and difficult to navigate. But from what I can tell,
there's been a slow and steady shift away from crappy Flash/Java
applets to more reusable HTML5 components and open repositories. The
value of open licensing has become increasingly apparent to countless
public institutions.

By sharpening their own role in these networks, WMF and other movement
organizations may be able to positively influence decisions on
questions like licensing, internationalization, and technology choice.

> Since we last discussed this, I've come across a great research paper on
> Meta, "Considering 2030: Future technology trends that will impact the
> Wikimedia movement", prepared for WMF by independent consultants Dot
> Connector Studio (Philadelphia) and Lutman & Associates (St Paul):
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Sources/Considering_2030:_Future_technology_trends_that_will_impact_the_Wikimedia_movement
>
> The sections "Things to keep in mind" and "Questions for the Wikimedia
> movement to consider" most closely reflect my own concerns.

I agree with the authors of this paper that WMF should carefully
position itself between early adopter and "laggard" when it comes to
new tech. Finding ways how tech can aid learning/collaboration, and
become part of the commons, turns WMF into a leader from the
perspective of many other organizations that are concerned with
delivering knowledge and learning, and a follower from the perspective
of tech companies. It's a special place to be. :)

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25) [ In reply to ]
Hi everybody --

I just wanted to follow up quickly that this report has been published and
is available here:


> I know that some folks were wondering about all the consultation comments
> about features, interfaces, and product improvements that didn't get
> incorporated into the strategy. We knew from the beginning of the processes
> that we'd certainly get quite a few of these requests that were too
> specific to be integrated into long-term strategic thinking and planned
> accordingly to document them. The goal was to consider how they might be
> taken up by either Foundation staff or interested volunteer developers. As
> a result, we're publishing a “Features report” written by Suzie Nussel that
> summarizes these requests, and should be a useful starting point for
> specific improvements that could be addressed in the shorter term.


The PDF version is at:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Movement_
Strategy_2017_-_2017_Features_and_programs_(cycle_1).pdf

and the wiki version of the report is at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/2017/Reports/
Features_and_Programs_report_summary

The Audiences team will be using this report as an input into future
product discussions and annual planning.

-Toby

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Katherine Maher <kmaher@wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Sorry for the delay in chiming in. It's been a busy few weeks, and while I
> haven't made a public update about strategy in a while, work has been
> continuing! We've now closed Phase 1, and we're heading into Phase 2, in
> which our objective is to start thinking about how we make the strategic
> direction into a plan of action and implementation. It's an opportunity to
> create greater clarity about how we each understand the direction, how we
> might set goals against it, what we may need to change to achieve these
> goals, and how we can contribute -- as projects, communities, and
> individuals. I’ll be sending my next weekly update shortly but I wanted to
> acknowledge the contributions in this thread first.
>
> I've read through this entire thread, and I've agreed, disagreed, agreed
> again, and started emails only to see new ones come in and have to scrap my
> drafts. While I found myself often agreeing with Erik, I dig the challenges
> you all have put forward and appreciate the diversity of opinions. Some of
> our differences stem from the unique contexts of the groups and individuals
> responding and will result in differences in implementation in each
> community. Other differences, such as questioning the very concept of
> source credibility, will certainly require additional discussion. But
> regardless of where we end up, it has been a delight to follow such a rich,
> substantive conversation. This has been one of the best, and
> most thought-provoking, Wikimedia-l threads I've read in some time, and I
> hope that it is the first of many as we go into Phase 2 of the movement
> strategy process.
>
> A few more responses inline:
>
> 2017-10-04 11:19 GMT-07:00 Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org>:
> >
> > I don't understand what exactly that direction is headed towards, there
> is
> > too much space for a variety of interpretation. The one thing that I take
> > away though, is that we won't place ourselves at the center of the free
> > knowledge universe (as a brand), but want to become a service. We don't
> > expect people to know about 'Wikipedia' in 10 years, but we do want that
> > our work is being put to good use.
>
> It's always helpful to read critique as a challenge to our logical
> assumptions. Lodewijk, I see where your interpretation comes from here, but
> it is vastly different than how I interpret from this statement. To the
> contrary, I wouldn’t say "service" and "brand" are mutually exclusive. I do
> think that Wikimedia should want to continue to be known as a destination
> for free knowledge, and we do want to increase brand awareness, especially
> in areas and contexts where we are not yet well (or not at all) known. Our
> brand (including our communities) and visibility are some of our most
> valuable assets as a movement, and it would be strategically unwise not to
> build on them for long-term planning.
>
> When I think about knowledge as a service, it means that we want this, *and
> much more*. It’s additive. We want to be who we are today, *and* we want to
> provide a service to other institutions. We want to use that brand and
> visibility to work with others in the ecosystem. We also want to be present
> in new experiences and delivery channels, in order to preserve the direct
> interface connection with Wikipedia's contributors and readers that we have
> on the web. I see this as essential - for our readers, it's about ensuring
> a core promise: that the chain of evidence for the information they seek is
> unbroken and transparent, from citation to edit. For our contributors, it's
> about extending ways to contribute as our digital interfaces evolve.
>
> We know from the Phase 1 research that many readers see Wikipedia as a
> utility, whether we like it or not. We know that people reuse our content
> in many contexts. My interpretation of “knowledge as a service” is not that
> we vanish into the background, but that we become ever more essential to
> people's lives. And part of our doing so is not only enriching the
> experience people have on Wikipedia, but investing in how Wikipedia can
> promote the opening of knowledge overall. Today, MediaWiki and Wikibase are
> already infrastructures that serve other free knowledge projects, in turn
> enriching the material on which our projects can draw. What more could we
> do if we supported openness more systemically?
>
> I understand that the direction may still feel too vague. A direction for
> the 2030 horizon is bound to lack specifics. I actually think this is okay.
> The direction comes from a small-ish group of drafters trying to make sense
> of 8 months of thousands of perspectives. In that sense, a small group can
> only do so much. It is now our responsibility, as movement actors, to take
> this direction and interpret it in our respective contexts, based on our
> respective experiences. This will be a major part of Phase 2 of the
> movement discussions.
>
> 2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com>:
> >
> > With an eye to 2030 and WMF's long-term direction, I do think it's
> > worth thinking about Wikidata's centrality, and I would agree with you
> > at least that the phrase "the essential infrastructure of the
> > ecosystem" does overstate what I think WMF should aspire to (the
> > "essential infrastructure" should consist of many open components
> > maintained by different groups).
>
> There is indeed an element of aspiration in that phrase. I knew it would be
> controversial, and we talked about it quite a bit in drafting, but
> advocated that we include it anyway. After all, our vision statement is "a
> world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all
> knowledge." That's certainly inclusive (it has no single parties or
> ownership) but it is also wildly aspirational. But despite the
> impossibility of our that aspiration, it has worked quite well: we've made
> great strides toward a project that is "impossible in theory".
>
> For each person who felt we should moderate the language of the direction,
> there was another who wanted us to be more bold and recapture this
> ambition. They wanted us to believe in ourselves, and give the world
> something to believe in. As Wikimedians, we tend to prefer matter-of-fact,
> sometimes plain and noncommittal statements. While that works well for NPOV
> content, a strategic direction also seeks to inspire ambitious efforts. The
> drafting group removed much of the flowery language from the earlier
> versions of the draft, but the goal was to keep just enough to inspire
> movement actors and external partners.
>
> 2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com>:
> >
> > Wikidata in particular is best seen not as the singular source of
> > truth, but as an important hub in a network of open data providers --
> > primarily governments, public institutions, nonprofits. This is
> > consistent with recent developments around Wikidata such as query
> > federation.
>
> Personally, I couldn’t agree more. I see federated structured data as an
> inevitable (and very favorable) outcome of the concept of a service-based
> model. Distribution enables greater flexibility in implementation and
> customization across the network while improving the resilience of the
> whole system. This is true in terms of technical stability, political
> influence or censorship, and breadth and depth of content. If one starts to
> understand Wikidata as a project, and Wikibase as a platform, we start to
> really be able to see how a broader adoption of open structures and
> attribution models can only enrich and increase the open ecosystem overall.
>
> I also think the Wikidata model is one that has been working very well and
> one that others in our ecosystem could benefit from. Today, on our newest
> Wikimedia project, we work with governments, the private sector, and
> individual community members, in largely constructive ways. And in many
> cases, the very existence of Wikidata makes it possible for these
> institutions to be open, when they would otherwise lack the expertise or
> resources to build their own open data infrastructure.
>
> For me, “Knowledge as a service” means supporting those institutions by
> providing the infrastructure that they can use for this purpose, and also
> accompanying them through the social and institutional changes that come
> with opening data and freeing knowledge. That infrastructure could be
> Wikidata, it could be other Wikimedia projects, or it could be other
> Wikibase instances, depending on what makes the most sense for each
> context.
>
> Anyway, there's a lot more to discuss, and thank you all again for these
> excellent conversations!
>
> I know that some folks were wondering about all the consultation comments
> about features, interfaces, and product improvements that didn't get
> incorporated into the strategy. We knew from the beginning of the processes
> that we'd certainly get quite a few of these requests that were too
> specific to be integrated into long-term strategic thinking and planned
> accordingly to document them. The goal was to consider how they might be
> taken up by either Foundation staff or interested volunteer developers. As
> a result, we're publishing a “Features report” written by Suzie Nussel that
> summarizes these requests, and should be a useful starting point for
> specific improvements that could be addressed in the shorter term.
>
> See you soon with the next strategy update.
>
> Katherine
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 8:01 AM, Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 7:31 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > Wikidata has its own problems in that regard that have triggered
> ongoing
> > > discussions and concerns on the English Wikipedia.[1]
> >
> > Tensions between different communities with overlapping but
> > non-identical objectives are unavoidable. Repository projects like
> > Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons provide huge payoff: they dramatically
> > reduce duplication of effort, enable small language communities to
> > benefit from the work done internationally, and can tackle a more
> > expansive scope than the immediate needs of existing projects. A few
> > examples include:
> >
> > - Wiki Loves Monuments, recognized as the world's largest photo
> competition
> > - Partnerships with countless galleries, libraries, archives, and museums
> > - Wikidata initiatives like mySociety's "Everypolitician" project or Gene
> > Wiki
> >
> > This is not without its costs, however. Differing policies, levels of
> > maturity, and social expectations will always fuel some level of
> > conflict, and the repository approach creates huge usability
> > challenges. The latter is also true for internal wiki features like
> > templates, which shift information out of the article space,
> > disempowering users who no longer understand how the whole is
> > constructed from its parts.
> >
> > I would call these usability and "legibility" issues the single
> > biggest challenge in the development of Wikidata, Structured Data for
> > Commons, and other repository functionality. Much related work has
> > already been done or is ticketed in Phabricator, such as the effective
> > propagation of changes into watchlists, article histories, and
> > notifications. Much more will need to follow.
> >
> > With regard to the issue of citations, it's worth noting that it's
> > already possible to _conditionally_ load data from Wikidata, excluding
> > information that is unsourced or only sourced circularly (i.e. to
> > Wikipedia itself). [1] Template invocations can also override values
> > provided by Wikidata, for example, if there is a source, but it is not
> > considered reliable by the standards of a specific project.
> >
> > > If a digital voice assistant propagates a Wikimedia mistake without
> > telling
> > > users where it got its information from, then there is not even a
> > feedback
> > > form. Editability is of no help at all if people can't find the source.
> >
> > I'm in favor of always indicating at least provenance (something like
> > "Here's a quote from Wikipedia:"), even for short excerpts, and I
> > certainly think WMF and chapters can advocate for this practice.
> > However, where short excerpts are concerned, it's not at all clear
> > that there is a _legal_ issue here, and that full compliance with all
> > requirements of the license is a reasonable "ask".
> >
> > Bing's search result page manages a decent compromise, I think: it
> > shows excerpts from Wikipedia clearly labeled as such, and it links to
> > the CC-BY-SA license if you expand the excerpt, e.g.:
> > https://www.bing.com/search?q=france
> >
> > I know that over the years, many efforts have been undertaken to
> > document best practices for re-use, ranging from local
> > community-created pages to chapter guides and tools like the
> > "Lizenzhinweisgenerator". I don't know what the best-available of
> > these is nowadays, but if none exists, it might be a good idea to
> > develop a new, comprehensive guide that takes into account voice
> > applications, tabular data, and so on.
> >
> > Such a guide would ideally not just be written from a license
> > compliance perspective, but also include recommendations, e.g., on how
> > to best indicate provenance, distinguishing "here's what you must do"
> > from "here's what we recommend".
> >
> > >> Wikidata will often provide a shallow first level of information about
> > >> a subject, while other linked sources provide deeper information. The
> > >> more structured the information, the easier it becomes to validate in
> > >> an automatic fashion that, for example, the subset of country
> > >> population time series data represented in Wikidata is an accurate
> > >> representation of the source material. Even when a large source
> > >> dataset is mirrored by Wikimedia (for low-latency visualization, say),
> > >> you can hash it, digitally sign it, and restrict modifiability of
> > >> copies.
> >
> > > Interesting, though I'm not aware of that being done at present.
> >
> > At present, Wikidata allows users to model constraints on internal
> > data validity. These constraints are used for regularly generated
> > database reports as well as on-demand lookup via
> > https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:ConstraintReport . This kicks
> > in, for example, if you put in an insane number in a population field,
> > or mark a country as female.
> >
> > There is a project underway to also validate against external sources;
> see:
> >
> > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase_Quality_
> > Extensions#Special_Page_Cross-Check_with_external_databases
> >
> > Wikidata still tends to deal with relatively small amounts of data; a
> > highly annotated item like Germany (Q183), for example, comes in at
> > under 1MB in uncompressed JSON form. Time series data like GDP is
> > often included only for a single point in time, or for a subset of the
> > available data. The relatively new "Data:" namespace on Commons exists
> > to store raw datasets; this is only used to a very limited extent so
> > far, but there are some examples of how such data can be visualized,
> > e.g.:
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Graph:Population_history
> >
> > Giving volunteers more powerful tools to select and visualize data
> > while automating much of the effort of maintaining data integrity
> > seems like an achievable and strategic goal, and as these examples
> > show, some building blocks for this are already in place.
> >
> > >> But the proprietary knowledge graphs are valuable to users in ways
> > >> that the previous generation of search engines was not. Interacting
> > >> with a device like you would with a human being ("Alexa/Google/Siri,
> > >> is yarrow edible?") makes knowledge more accessible and usable,
> > >> including to people who have difficulty reading long texts, or who are
> > >> not literate at all. In this sense I don't think WMF should ever find
> > >> itself in the position to argue _against_ inclusion of information
> > >> from Wikimedia projects in these applications.
> >
> > > There is a distinct likelihood that they will make reading Wikipedia
> > > articles progressively obsolete, just like the availability of Googling
> > has
> > > dissuaded many people from sitting down and reading a book.
> >
> > There is an important distinction between "lookup" and "learning"; the
> > former is a transactional activity ("Is this country part of the Euro
> > zone?") and the latter an immersive one ("How did the EU come
> > about?"). Where we now get instant answers from home assistants or
> > search engines, we may have previously skimmed, or performed our own
> > highly optimized search in the local knowledge repository called a
> > "bookshelf".
> >
> > In other words, even if some instant answers lead to a drop in
> > Wikipedia views, it would be unreasonable to assume that those views
> > were "reads" rather than "skims". When you're on a purely
> > transactional journey, you appreciate almost anything that shortens
> > it.
> >
> > I don't think Wikimedia should fight the gravity of a user's
> > intentions out of its own pedagogical motives. Rather, it should make
> > both lookup and learning as appealing as possible. Doing well in the
> > "lookup" category is important to avoid handing too much control off
> > to gatekeepers, and being good in the "learning" category holds the
> > greatest promise for lasting positive impact.
> >
> > As for the larger social issue, at least in the US, the youngest (most
> > googley) generation is the one that reads the most books, and
> > income/education are very strong predictors of whether people do or
> > not:
> > http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/19/slightly-
> > fewer-americans-are-reading-print-books-new-survey-finds/
> >
> > >> The applications themselves are not the problem; the centralized
> > >> gatekeeper control is. Knowledge as an open service (and network) is
> > >> actually the solution to that root problem. It's how we weaken and
> > >> perhaps even break the control of the gatekeepers. Your critique seems
> > >> to boil down to "Let's ask Google for more crumbs". In spite of all
> > >> your anti-corporate social justice rhetoric, that seems to be the path
> > >> to developing a one-sided dependency relationship.
> >
> > > I considered that, but in the end felt that given the extent to which
> > > Google profited from volunteers' work, it wasn't an unfair ask.
> >
> > While I think your proposal to ask Google to share access to resources
> > it already has digitized or licensed is worth considering, I would
> > suggest being very careful about the long term implications of any
> > such agreements. Having a single corporation control volunteers'
> > access to proprietary resources means that such access can also be
> > used as leverage down the road, or abruptly be taken away for other
> > reasons.
> >
> > I think it would be more interesting to spin off the existing
> > "Wikipedia Library" into its own international organization (or home
> > it with an existing one), tasked with giving free knowledge
> > contributors (including potentially to other free knowledge projects
> > like OSM) access to proprietary resources, and pursuing public and
> > private funding of its own. The development of many relationships may
> > take longer, but it is more sustainable in the long run. Moreover, it
> > has the potential to lead to powerful collaborations with existing
> > public/nonprofit digitization and preservation efforts.
> >
> > > Publicise the fact that Google and others profit from volunteer work,
> and
> > > give very little back. The world could do with more articles like this:
> > >
> > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/
> > 2015/07/22/you-dont-know-it-but-youre-working-for-facebook-for-free/
> >
> > I have plenty of criticisms of Facebook, but the fact that users don't
> > get paid for posting selfies isn't one of them. My thoughts on how the
> > free culture movement (not limited to Wikipedia) should interface with
> > the for-profit sector are as follows, FWIW:
> >
> > 1) Demand appropriate levels of taxation on private profits, [2]
> > sufficient investments in public education and cultural institutions,
> > and "open licensing" requirements on government contracts with private
> > corporations.
> >
> > 2) Require compliance with free licenses, first gently, then more
> > firmly. This is a game of diminishing returns, and it's most useful to
> > go after the most blatant and problematic cases. As noted above, "fair
> > use" limits should be understood and taken into consideration.
> >
> > 3) Encourage corporations to be "good citizens" of the free culture
> > world, whether it's through indicating provenance beyond what's
> > legally required, or by contributing directly (open source
> > development, knowledge/data donations, in-kind goods/services,
> > financial contributions). The payoff for them is goodwill and a
> > thriving (i.e. also profitable) open Internet that more people in more
> > places use for more things.
> >
> > 4) Build community-driven, open, nonprofit alternatives to
> > out-of-control corporate quasi-monopolies. As far as proprietary
> > knowledge graphs are concerned, I will reiterate: open data is the
> > solution, not the problem.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Erik
> >
> > [1] See the getValue function in
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:WikidataIB , specifically its
> > "onlysourced" parameter. The module also adds a convenient "Edit this
> > on Wikidata" link to each claim included from there.
> >
> > [2] As far as Wikimedia organizations are concerned, specific tax
> > policy will likely always be out of scope of political advocacy, but
> > the other points need not be.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Katherine Maher
> Executive Director
>
> *We moved! **Our new address:*
>
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600
> San Francisco, CA 94104
>
> +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
> +1 (415) 712 4873
> kmaher@wikimedia.org
> https://annual.wikimedia.org
> _______________________________________________
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25) [ In reply to ]
>
> (Oddly enough, I am more likely to read a Wikipedia article
> from beginning to end if I'm looking something up on the Kindle, while I'm
> reading a book.)
>

There's definitely some appetite for [WP-branded and -supported!] reading
and research devices tuned for this sort of work: hyperlinked referencing,
bookmarking, reading, annotating, and compiling into an overview of one's
thoughts while working through an original document [book, article,
encyclopedia article].


> I think it would be more interesting to spin off the existing
> > "Wikipedia Library" into its own international organization (or home
> > it with an existing one), tasked with giving free knowledge
> > contributors (including potentially to other free knowledge projects
> > like OSM) access to proprietary resources


Warmly agreed. Related essential services: curating and organizing
proprietary resources, and transmogrifying them into reusable elements [cf.
ContentMine/FactMine].
A few narrow areas of this are covered by commercial services, but most are
not.

Sam.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25) [ In reply to ]
Hi Erik,

I get the feeling you would question my identity if I didn't follow up
by asking you whether they asked you to endorse the possibility that
Mandarin could eclipse English?

Best regards,
James


On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 1:47 AM, Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 5:56 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I think it would be good to do some legal work to gain that clarity. The
>> Amazon Echo issue, with the Echo potentially using millions of words from
>> Wikipedia without any kind of attribution and indication of provenance at
>> all, was raised on this list in July for example.
>
> There is some basic attribution in the Alexa app (which keeps a log of
> all transactions). As I said, I don't see a reason not to include
> basic attribution in the voice response as well, but it still seems
> worth pointing out. Here's what it looks like in the app (yup, it
> really does say "Image: Wikipedia", which is all too typical):
>
> https://imgur.com/a/vchAl
>
> I'm all in favor of a legal opinion on bulk use of introductory
> snippets from Wikimedia articles without attribution/license
> statement. While I'm obviously not a lawyer, I do, however, sincerely
> doubt that it would give you the clarity you seek, given the extremely
> unusual nature of authorship of Wikipedia, and the unusual nature of
> the re-use. I suspect that such clarity would result only from legal
> action, which I would consider to be extremely ill-advised, and which
> WMF almost certainly lacks standing to pursue on its own.
>
>> If CC-BY-SA is not enforced, Wikipedia will stealthily
>> shift to CC-0 in practice. I don't think that's desirable.
>
> Regardless of the legal issue, I agree that nudging re-users to
> attribute content is useful to reinforce the concept that such
> attribution goes with re-use. Even with CC-0, showing
> providence/citations is a good idea.
>
>> An interesting question to me is whether, with the explosion of information
>> available, people will spend so much time with transactional queries across
>> a large number of diverse topics that there is little time left for
>> immersive, in-depth learning of any one of them, and how that might
>> gradually change the type of knowledge people possess (information
>> overload).
>
> It's a fair question; the Internet has certainly pushed our ability to
> externalize knowledge into overdrive. Perhaps we've already passed the
> point where this is a difference in kind, rather than a difference in
> degree, compared with how we've shared knowledge in the past; if
> [[Neuralink]] doesn't turn out to be vaporware, it may push us over
> that edge. :P
>
> That said, people have to acquire specialized domain knowledge to make
> a living, and the explosive growth of many immersive learning
> platforms (course platforms like edX, Coursera, Udacity; language
> learning tools like Duolingo; the vast educational YouTube community,
> etc.) suggests that there is a very large demand. While I share some
> of your concerns about the role of for-profit gatekeepers to
> knowledge, I am not genuinely worried that the availability of
> transactional "instant answers" will quench our innate thirst for
> knowledge or our need to develop new skills.
>
> I'm most concerned about information systems that deliver highly
> effective emotional "hits" and are therefore more habit-forming and
> appealing than Wikipedia, Google, or a good book. The negative effect
> of high early childhood TV use on attention is well-documented, and
> excessive use of social media (which are continuously optimized to be
> habit-forming) may have similar effects. Alarmist "Facebook is more
> addictive than crack" headlines aside, the reality is that social
> media are great delivery vehicles for the kinds of little rewards that
> keep you coming back.
>
> In this competition for attention, Wikipedia articles, especially in
> STEM topics, have a well-deserved reputation of often being nearly
> impenetrable for people not already familiar with a given domain.
> While we will never be able to reach everyone, we should be able to
> reach people who _want_ to learn but have a hard time staying focused
> enough to do so, due to a very low frustration tolerance.
>
> I think one way to bottom line any Wikimedia strategy is to ask
> whether it results in people getting better learning experiences,
> through WMF's sites or through affiliates and partners. Personally, I
> think the long term focus on "knowledge as a service" and "knowledge
> equity" is right on target, but it's also useful to explicitly think
> about good old Wikipedia and how it might benefit directly. Here are
> some things that I think might help develop better learning
> experiences on Wikipedia:
>
> - a next generation templating system optimized for data exploration,
> timelines, etc., with greater separation of design, code, data and
> text
> - better support for writing/finding articles that target different
> audiences (beginners/experts)
> - tech standards and requirements for embedding rich, interactive
> "explorable explanations" beyond what any template system can do
> - commissioned illustrations or animations for highly complex topics
> (possibly organized through another nonprofit)
> - assessment partnerships with external groups to verify that learners
> get what they need from a given resource
>
> In practice, this could translate to:
>
> - beautiful animations illustrating concepts like the immune system,
> the Big Bang, or the inner workings of different engine types
> - custom interactive explanations for concepts in statistics or
> mathematics, such as the ones in
> http://students.brown.edu/seeing-theory/
> - code that you can interact with in articles _about_ code like
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksort
> - highly visual explorables for topics that benefit from it -- Thedore
> Grey's award-winning "Elements" app is a nice example:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FesjAdIWBk
> - better ways to go from one article to the next: data visualizations,
> topic maps, dynamic lists, etc.
>
> The reason I think this matches well with what's stated in the
> strategy is that it's clear that Wikimedia cannot do it alone. Many
> interactive applications will require the kind of open data platform
> that Wikidata will hopefully become. Revision metadata APIs (with some
> form of write access) may make it easier for folks to help with the
> assessment of content quality.
>
> The international education space (schools, colleges, unis) may often
> seem intractable and difficult to navigate. But from what I can tell,
> there's been a slow and steady shift away from crappy Flash/Java
> applets to more reusable HTML5 components and open repositories. The
> value of open licensing has become increasingly apparent to countless
> public institutions.
>
> By sharpening their own role in these networks, WMF and other movement
> organizations may be able to positively influence decisions on
> questions like licensing, internationalization, and technology choice.
>
>> Since we last discussed this, I've come across a great research paper on
>> Meta, "Considering 2030: Future technology trends that will impact the
>> Wikimedia movement", prepared for WMF by independent consultants Dot
>> Connector Studio (Philadelphia) and Lutman & Associates (St Paul):
>>
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Sources/Considering_2030:_Future_technology_trends_that_will_impact_the_Wikimedia_movement
>>
>> The sections "Things to keep in mind" and "Questions for the Wikimedia
>> movement to consider" most closely reflect my own concerns.
>
> I agree with the authors of this paper that WMF should carefully
> position itself between early adopter and "laggard" when it comes to
> new tech. Finding ways how tech can aid learning/collaboration, and
> become part of the commons, turns WMF into a leader from the
> perspective of many other organizations that are concerned with
> delivering knowledge and learning, and a follower from the perspective
> of tech companies. It's a special place to be. :)
>
> Erik
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25) [ In reply to ]
Hi James,

I fail to see the relation between Erik message and you answer.

I have huge doubt that Mandarin will eclipse English anytime soon.
Despite the Confucius institutes growing everywhere in the world, as far
as my narrow knowledge of the world goes, PRC doesn't seem to aim
exporting Mandarin with heavy means of soft power competing with the
Hollywood industry.

Anstata?e mi bone fidas ke Esperanto frue estos ?ie parolita anstata?,
kiel celas nian sekretan planon de monda superrego. Fakte ni jam
kontrolas ?inian politikon pri tio, kaj uzas ?iajn rimedojn por nia
propra propagando[1], ehe!

[1] http://esperanto.cri.cn/

Mondsuperrege,
psikosklavoj


Le 28/10/2017 à 00:39, James Salsman a écrit :
> Hi Erik,
>
> I get the feeling you would question my identity if I didn't follow up
> by asking you whether they asked you to endorse the possibility that
> Mandarin could eclipse English?
>
> Best regards,
> James
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 1:47 AM, Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 5:56 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I think it would be good to do some legal work to gain that clarity. The
>>> Amazon Echo issue, with the Echo potentially using millions of words from
>>> Wikipedia without any kind of attribution and indication of provenance at
>>> all, was raised on this list in July for example.
>> There is some basic attribution in the Alexa app (which keeps a log of
>> all transactions). As I said, I don't see a reason not to include
>> basic attribution in the voice response as well, but it still seems
>> worth pointing out. Here's what it looks like in the app (yup, it
>> really does say "Image: Wikipedia", which is all too typical):
>>
>> https://imgur.com/a/vchAl
>>
>> I'm all in favor of a legal opinion on bulk use of introductory
>> snippets from Wikimedia articles without attribution/license
>> statement. While I'm obviously not a lawyer, I do, however, sincerely
>> doubt that it would give you the clarity you seek, given the extremely
>> unusual nature of authorship of Wikipedia, and the unusual nature of
>> the re-use. I suspect that such clarity would result only from legal
>> action, which I would consider to be extremely ill-advised, and which
>> WMF almost certainly lacks standing to pursue on its own.
>>
>>> If CC-BY-SA is not enforced, Wikipedia will stealthily
>>> shift to CC-0 in practice. I don't think that's desirable.
>> Regardless of the legal issue, I agree that nudging re-users to
>> attribute content is useful to reinforce the concept that such
>> attribution goes with re-use. Even with CC-0, showing
>> providence/citations is a good idea.
>>
>>> An interesting question to me is whether, with the explosion of information
>>> available, people will spend so much time with transactional queries across
>>> a large number of diverse topics that there is little time left for
>>> immersive, in-depth learning of any one of them, and how that might
>>> gradually change the type of knowledge people possess (information
>>> overload).
>> It's a fair question; the Internet has certainly pushed our ability to
>> externalize knowledge into overdrive. Perhaps we've already passed the
>> point where this is a difference in kind, rather than a difference in
>> degree, compared with how we've shared knowledge in the past; if
>> [[Neuralink]] doesn't turn out to be vaporware, it may push us over
>> that edge. :P
>>
>> That said, people have to acquire specialized domain knowledge to make
>> a living, and the explosive growth of many immersive learning
>> platforms (course platforms like edX, Coursera, Udacity; language
>> learning tools like Duolingo; the vast educational YouTube community,
>> etc.) suggests that there is a very large demand. While I share some
>> of your concerns about the role of for-profit gatekeepers to
>> knowledge, I am not genuinely worried that the availability of
>> transactional "instant answers" will quench our innate thirst for
>> knowledge or our need to develop new skills.
>>
>> I'm most concerned about information systems that deliver highly
>> effective emotional "hits" and are therefore more habit-forming and
>> appealing than Wikipedia, Google, or a good book. The negative effect
>> of high early childhood TV use on attention is well-documented, and
>> excessive use of social media (which are continuously optimized to be
>> habit-forming) may have similar effects. Alarmist "Facebook is more
>> addictive than crack" headlines aside, the reality is that social
>> media are great delivery vehicles for the kinds of little rewards that
>> keep you coming back.
>>
>> In this competition for attention, Wikipedia articles, especially in
>> STEM topics, have a well-deserved reputation of often being nearly
>> impenetrable for people not already familiar with a given domain.
>> While we will never be able to reach everyone, we should be able to
>> reach people who _want_ to learn but have a hard time staying focused
>> enough to do so, due to a very low frustration tolerance.
>>
>> I think one way to bottom line any Wikimedia strategy is to ask
>> whether it results in people getting better learning experiences,
>> through WMF's sites or through affiliates and partners. Personally, I
>> think the long term focus on "knowledge as a service" and "knowledge
>> equity" is right on target, but it's also useful to explicitly think
>> about good old Wikipedia and how it might benefit directly. Here are
>> some things that I think might help develop better learning
>> experiences on Wikipedia:
>>
>> - a next generation templating system optimized for data exploration,
>> timelines, etc., with greater separation of design, code, data and
>> text
>> - better support for writing/finding articles that target different
>> audiences (beginners/experts)
>> - tech standards and requirements for embedding rich, interactive
>> "explorable explanations" beyond what any template system can do
>> - commissioned illustrations or animations for highly complex topics
>> (possibly organized through another nonprofit)
>> - assessment partnerships with external groups to verify that learners
>> get what they need from a given resource
>>
>> In practice, this could translate to:
>>
>> - beautiful animations illustrating concepts like the immune system,
>> the Big Bang, or the inner workings of different engine types
>> - custom interactive explanations for concepts in statistics or
>> mathematics, such as the ones in
>> http://students.brown.edu/seeing-theory/
>> - code that you can interact with in articles _about_ code like
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksort
>> - highly visual explorables for topics that benefit from it -- Thedore
>> Grey's award-winning "Elements" app is a nice example:
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FesjAdIWBk
>> - better ways to go from one article to the next: data visualizations,
>> topic maps, dynamic lists, etc.
>>
>> The reason I think this matches well with what's stated in the
>> strategy is that it's clear that Wikimedia cannot do it alone. Many
>> interactive applications will require the kind of open data platform
>> that Wikidata will hopefully become. Revision metadata APIs (with some
>> form of write access) may make it easier for folks to help with the
>> assessment of content quality.
>>
>> The international education space (schools, colleges, unis) may often
>> seem intractable and difficult to navigate. But from what I can tell,
>> there's been a slow and steady shift away from crappy Flash/Java
>> applets to more reusable HTML5 components and open repositories. The
>> value of open licensing has become increasingly apparent to countless
>> public institutions.
>>
>> By sharpening their own role in these networks, WMF and other movement
>> organizations may be able to positively influence decisions on
>> questions like licensing, internationalization, and technology choice.
>>
>>> Since we last discussed this, I've come across a great research paper on
>>> Meta, "Considering 2030: Future technology trends that will impact the
>>> Wikimedia movement", prepared for WMF by independent consultants Dot
>>> Connector Studio (Philadelphia) and Lutman & Associates (St Paul):
>>>
>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Sources/Considering_2030:_Future_technology_trends_that_will_impact_the_Wikimedia_movement
>>>
>>> The sections "Things to keep in mind" and "Questions for the Wikimedia
>>> movement to consider" most closely reflect my own concerns.
>> I agree with the authors of this paper that WMF should carefully
>> position itself between early adopter and "laggard" when it comes to
>> new tech. Finding ways how tech can aid learning/collaboration, and
>> become part of the commons, turns WMF into a leader from the
>> perspective of many other organizations that are concerned with
>> delivering knowledge and learning, and a follower from the perspective
>> of tech companies. It's a special place to be. :)
>>
>> Erik
>>
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