5 ms·

Having multiple great other projects with little recognition (or much less public awareness) than Wikipedia must be challenging, and for all of us, readers, unf

Having multiple great other projects with little recognition (or much less public awareness) than Wikipedia must be challenging, and for all of us, readers, unfortunate. Projects like Wikidata (basis for all knowledge graphs powering search engines), Wikinews (what could potentially be fact checked news in an age of misinformation), etc could all benefit from some raised awareness for all Wikimedia projects. Even raising money from donations, is usually targeted at Wikipedia. I do not how the governance structure of Wikimedia influences the distribution of donations, or whether renaming is meant to influence this. Overall, I see a sincere struggle to get traction around more Wikimedia projects - and I find that commendable.

romwell 6y ago
Counterpoint: a "Wikipedia article" has a worldwide recognition and trust precisely because it does not stand for a news article. If you rebrand Wikinews to being a part of Wikipedia, the value of a "Wikipedia article" goes down, since there is less distinction between the two. You might raise awareness. You might also kill the brand, and the project. There are other ways of raising awareness than by rebranding.
- basch 6y ago
  >a "Wikipedia article" has a worldwide recognition and trust For the average person, Wikipedia exists as a mix of trust and distrust, with its distrustful image preceding it. It still carries the reputation of something you cant cite in school, that anyone can edit. The name itself is thrown around as a pejorative, even by people who behind closed doors consume it. This is also a surprisingly hard claim to google, for sources. "wikipedia used as a pejorative -site:wikipedia.org -site:wiktionary.org -site:wikipedia.nd.ax" etc returns nothing I want.
  - romwell 6y ago
    Perhaps it's a surprisingly hard claim to google because it's not something that happens often? :) I personally don't know anyone who would use it that way. Yes, people are aware that articles on controversial topics can fluctuate, but generally, people love using Wikipedia as a starting point of finding out about things. When someone wants to find out about West Indian Manatee, they don't go to Britannica.
    - frosted-flakes 6y ago
      For some things, maybe. But it seems that more often than not, the Wikipedia article is just a jumble of incomprehensible technical terms and mathematical formulae, and I end up looking elsewhere. At least for anything remotely technical. For example, Fitts's Law[1], which is a super simple concept that the further away a target is, the bigger it needs to be to quickly and accurately reach it. It's super relevant in any sort of graphical user interface design, particularly mouse-driven ones, and you don't need to know the math behind it to understand it. But this is how Wikipedia introduces it: > Fitts's law is a predictive model of human movement primarily used in human–computer interaction and ergonomics. This scientific law predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target. And it jumps right into a bunch of complicated-looking math from there. If you're not already familiar with the topic and you're also not a mathematician, the whole thing is complete gibberish. That was only the first topic I thought of, and I've never seen that particular page before. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
      - romwell 6y ago
        It's hard for me to see anything bad with this article, but I am a mathematician :) I agree that there are problems with Wikipedia getting too technical and dry, but that's kind of expected of an encyclopedia. Still, there is a consistent expectation, even if it's "technical mumbo jumbo". It's very different from whatever other Wikimedia projects offer. And that's the problem.
        frosted-flakes 6y ago
        It reads like a research paper, that's why it's bad. It could start off something along my description of the topic in layman's terms before getting into the technical details which are often not relevant. Wikipedia is a general purpose encyclopedia, not directed towards any particular group of people. But many articles are written towards people that are highly-educated in the field the topic is in, which kind of misses the point.
      - 6y ago

romwell 6y ago

Counterpoint: a "Wikipedia article" has a worldwide recognition and trust precisely because it does not stand for a news article. If you rebrand Wikinews to being a part of Wikipedia, the value of a "Wikipedia article" goes down, since there is less distinction between the two. You might raise awareness. You might also kill the brand, and the project. There are other ways of raising awareness than by rebranding.

basch 6y ago
>a "Wikipedia article" has a worldwide recognition and trust For the average person, Wikipedia exists as a mix of trust and distrust, with its distrustful image preceding it. It still carries the reputation of something you cant cite in school, that anyone can edit. The name itself is thrown around as a pejorative, even by people who behind closed doors consume it. This is also a surprisingly hard claim to google, for sources. "wikipedia used as a pejorative -site:wikipedia.org -site:wiktionary.org -site:wikipedia.nd.ax" etc returns nothing I want.
- romwell 6y ago
  Perhaps it's a surprisingly hard claim to google because it's not something that happens often? :) I personally don't know anyone who would use it that way. Yes, people are aware that articles on controversial topics can fluctuate, but generally, people love using Wikipedia as a starting point of finding out about things. When someone wants to find out about West Indian Manatee, they don't go to Britannica.
  - frosted-flakes 6y ago
    For some things, maybe. But it seems that more often than not, the Wikipedia article is just a jumble of incomprehensible technical terms and mathematical formulae, and I end up looking elsewhere. At least for anything remotely technical. For example, Fitts's Law[1], which is a super simple concept that the further away a target is, the bigger it needs to be to quickly and accurately reach it. It's super relevant in any sort of graphical user interface design, particularly mouse-driven ones, and you don't need to know the math behind it to understand it. But this is how Wikipedia introduces it: > Fitts's law is a predictive model of human movement primarily used in human–computer interaction and ergonomics. This scientific law predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target. And it jumps right into a bunch of complicated-looking math from there. If you're not already familiar with the topic and you're also not a mathematician, the whole thing is complete gibberish. That was only the first topic I thought of, and I've never seen that particular page before. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
    - romwell 6y ago
      It's hard for me to see anything bad with this article, but I am a mathematician :) I agree that there are problems with Wikipedia getting too technical and dry, but that's kind of expected of an encyclopedia. Still, there is a consistent expectation, even if it's "technical mumbo jumbo". It's very different from whatever other Wikimedia projects offer. And that's the problem.
      - frosted-flakes 6y ago
        It reads like a research paper, that's why it's bad. It could start off something along my description of the topic in layman's terms before getting into the technical details which are often not relevant. Wikipedia is a general purpose encyclopedia, not directed towards any particular group of people. But many articles are written towards people that are highly-educated in the field the topic is in, which kind of misses the point.
    - 6y ago