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More influence from the USA? That's really what we needed from Wikipedia. > But Vrandečić countered that each volunteer community could decide for itself wheth

by Zababa 5y ago

More influence from the USA? That's really what we needed from Wikipedia. > But Vrandečić countered that each volunteer community could decide for itself whether Abstract Wikipedia should be used as a baseline. So a few people in the "volunteer community" will decide which biais one of the biggest source of information online will follow? > Throughout this year’s Wikimania, a number of volunteers expressed concern that English was becoming the lingua franca of the movement, and that English Wikipedia was receiving more attention than its counterparts. Vrandečic suspects that Abstract Wikipedia could help with this problem, too. How? Code is written in English, its documentation in English, the resources in English. Unless we do pure lambda calculus or something like that. I'm going to be very skeptic here, but this sounds like a power-grabbing move. That is, some people in Wikipedia want to leverage the power they already have even more. I know how strong the idea of "making things right with tech" can be, but sometimes that's not the correct answer, and this is one of those cases.

yorwba 5y ago
> Unless we do pure lambda calculus or something like that. Yes, that's the plan. The Wikilambda project was renamed to Wikifunctions (probably because not many people know what "lambda" means in this context), but they kept the logo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikifunctions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikifunctions Wikidata already demonstrates that language-agnostic knowledge representation works, it's just that it feels like a giant listing of disjointed facts. The new initiative is about turning that into something that wouldn't feel out of place in a human-written Wikipedia article.
- Zababa 5y ago
  Sure, but most of the mindshare will still navigate around English. Look at the number of languages for the introduction https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Introduction https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Introduction, and then look at the Tours https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Tours https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Tours. Already here we see a massive reduction in the number of languages. I think that the more specialized the information on Wikifunctions or Wikidata becomes, the fewer language choices there will be. This means it could appeal mostly to bilingual or English native audiences. Programming is already very focused on English. I don't think you can build something for people all over the world if most of the people actually building this thing can all communicate with each other in the same language. That's one of the moments where diversity in teams is very powerful: if your team is only composed of people that can understand and express themselves in English, the people that can't won't be served well by your product. Of course you could encode "In this culture, X is Y and in this culture, X is Z", but at this point why not just keep the encyclopedia like it is right now?
  - kaba0 5y ago
    But now you only have to provide a native language tutorial of wikifunctions instead of recreating all the vast information available in different languages. It is perhaps unfortunate that English is the default medium, but such is life. We can’t really get to do anything together without a common language, but I don’t see how choosing one of the most spoken second languages as common ground is discriminating. It is inclusive to the widest amount of people over not having such a functionality.
    - Zababa 5y ago
      It's not inclusive, because the idea is to push a unique source of truth on those people rather than let them express their truth in their language.
      - yorwba 5y ago
        The idea is to provide a unique source of truth that allows everyone to express their truth in their language and have it reflected in all other languages.
      - kaba0 5y ago
        So you say there is no universal truth? Is the mass of the Sun different between English and Hungarian?
        Zababa 5y ago
        I think that there are universal truth, I just don't want the distinction between what is an universal truth and what is not to be made by a small team of active Wikipedia contributors. I realize that this is probably already the case, but I think these changes will aggravate that.

by Zababa 5y ago

yorwba 5y ago

> Unless we do pure lambda calculus or something like that. Yes, that's the plan. The Wikilambda project was renamed to Wikifunctions (probably because not many people know what "lambda" means in this context), but they kept the logo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikifunctions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikifunctions Wikidata already demonstrates that language-agnostic knowledge representation works, it's just that it feels like a giant listing of disjointed facts. The new initiative is about turning that into something that wouldn't feel out of place in a human-written Wikipedia article.

Zababa 5y ago
Sure, but most of the mindshare will still navigate around English. Look at the number of languages for the introduction https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Introduction https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Introduction, and then look at the Tours https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Tours https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Tours. Already here we see a massive reduction in the number of languages. I think that the more specialized the information on Wikifunctions or Wikidata becomes, the fewer language choices there will be. This means it could appeal mostly to bilingual or English native audiences. Programming is already very focused on English. I don't think you can build something for people all over the world if most of the people actually building this thing can all communicate with each other in the same language. That's one of the moments where diversity in teams is very powerful: if your team is only composed of people that can understand and express themselves in English, the people that can't won't be served well by your product. Of course you could encode "In this culture, X is Y and in this culture, X is Z", but at this point why not just keep the encyclopedia like it is right now?
- kaba0 5y ago
  But now you only have to provide a native language tutorial of wikifunctions instead of recreating all the vast information available in different languages. It is perhaps unfortunate that English is the default medium, but such is life. We can’t really get to do anything together without a common language, but I don’t see how choosing one of the most spoken second languages as common ground is discriminating. It is inclusive to the widest amount of people over not having such a functionality.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    It's not inclusive, because the idea is to push a unique source of truth on those people rather than let them express their truth in their language.
    - yorwba 5y ago
      The idea is to provide a unique source of truth that allows everyone to express their truth in their language and have it reflected in all other languages.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      So you say there is no universal truth? Is the mass of the Sun different between English and Hungarian?
      - Zababa 5y ago
        I think that there are universal truth, I just don't want the distinction between what is an universal truth and what is not to be made by a small team of active Wikipedia contributors. I realize that this is probably already the case, but I think these changes will aggravate that.