Participants, please read/think about/research these, ahead of time:
- Session description:
- This session is about how people participate in the creation of our works of knowledge. Lowering barriers to entry, while expanding on the knowledge we serve. To do so inclusively and resiliently.
- Topics that likely will come up in this session are:
- Structured discussions
- Collaborative editing
- Content other than our traditional encyclopedia
- sister wikis, news content, wikisource, wikivoyage
- oral history
- video, topology, statistics creation and consumption
- creating trust in content without access to newspapers
- copyright violation detection
- Metadata
- Adding annotations to content
- Location info
- Categories, banners, pageimages etc.
- Privacy and safety for contributors and readers
- Session Goals:
- Determine if we need new forms of distribution and what priority should these have
- Identify the most valuable tools we can provide to contributors and what we need for those
- Do we prioritise Wikipedia type content or other types of content ?
- What are the smallest technology investments we can do, with the biggest returns ?
- Pre-event questions for discussion
- The strategic direction statement opens with this sentence: "By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us." For the latter part of this statement, does this simply mean others can join us if they do things our way? Or does it mean the MW system will evolve to allow for others to participate and contribute using different systems? For example, if people want to contribute via videos or forums (message boards), will MW handle integration of that content?
- Some of the submissions for this topic talk about changing to a decentralized, distributed architecture. Some submissions talk about how this would enable remote or censored users to contribute to a secondary server and their revisions would be synchronized into the primary database. One submission talks about using a data pirate's approach. I think even this submission is related to a distributed architecture. This ability to synchronize multiple servers is a common theme. Can and should MediaWiki support multiple distributed servers that can synchronize asynchronously?
- It seems like many of the other submissions are centered around transforming the way we communicate the data in Wikipedia and the way we communicate about Wikipedia. These topics include real-time collaboration (like etherpad), yet another discussion page tool (Extension:Structured Discussions), git-like features (forks, branches, etc), and social tools (find people who know about the same topics as you to collaborate). A lot of these talk about non-encyclopedic formats and structuring the data in a way to allow for new interfaces and experiences. Are these ideas in conflict with "What Wikipedia is not"? Should we challenge some of the "rules" on the What Wikipedia is not page? In order to consider these new approaches to knowledge sharing, should that encyclopedic stance evolve?
- Should we challenge the assertion that Wikipedia is the "sum of all knowledge"? Currently, Wikipedia does not allow for tutorials or guide-books. So one can learn about the basic concept of an automobile starter, but one cannot learn how to change the starter on a 2016 4Runner. For that, they have to go to YouTube or message boards. So it seems Wikipedia is currently only "some of all knowledge". Should MediaWiki evolve so it can integrate all these different knowledge formats into a single knowledge portal?
- The title of our session is "Advancing the Contributor Experience". Is our goal to make things better for those already contributing? Or are we trying to make the experience of contributing better in the hopes of enticing new contributors? We really need to ask "who is not contributing and why?" Some research has been done, but has it all been put to use?
- As a viewer/consumer, when we want to know something we typically start with Google and Wikipedia. But if we don't find the answer there, we'll search YouTube, message boards, and stack exchange sites. So we should really think about what content is in those videos and message boards and why those people didn't post it to Wikipedia.
- Let's say someone learned something and wants to share it. As a contributor, they might first think to share it on Wikipedia. But Wikipedia only wants it if it's "encyclopedic". There are other wikis and there is Wiki Data and Commons, but a casual user might be intimidated and not know where to add their input. So the natural progression is to post a video on YouTube or to make a post on some message boards or a stack exchange site. Maybe it's just the "formal" feeling of Wikipedia compared to other online media. Is there potential opportunity to pull in more Wikipedia contributors if Wikipedia's interface and system had some of the attributes of YouTube and message boards? What is the overlap between Wikipedia contributors and YouTube or Stack Overflow contributors?
- How do we deal with the ever increasing complexity by doing more and more, and the effects this complexity has upon our contributors
- Contributors seem to want to do a lot of experimentation with 'knowledge', but often seem stuck in current forms of our projects and/or the inabilities of our platforms. how can we meaningfully help them ?
- Going back to the submission papers for this topic, which of these ideas do we think would actually entice contributors to other web resources to begin contributing to Wikipedia? Which of these ideas would appeal to the YouTubers, the Stack Overflowers, the message board posters, and the bloggers?
- Our technology influences the people that work with it. How do we responsibly steer this 'social' impact we make.
- Related position statements:
- Related background reading:
Session notes:
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit/2018/Advancing_the_Contributor_Experience (copied from https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/devsummit18-advancingcontributorexperience )
Topic Leaders (@Darenwelsh @TheDJ), please
- Add more details to this task description,
- Coordinate any pre-event discussions (here, IRC, email, hangout, etc),
- Outline the plan for discussing this topic at the Developer Summit.
- Optionally, include what it will not try to solve.
- Update this task with summaries of any pre-event discussions.
- Include ways for people not attending to be involved in discussions before the summit and afterwards.
This is one of the 8 Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018 topics.
Post-event Summary:
- ...
Action items:
- ...