Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Cycle 3/Report

2017 Movement strategy

Track A

Track B

Track C

Track D

Cycle 3 Summary Report (July - August)

Executive Summary

During July, five key challenges posed by the New Voices research were presented weekly to the communities and organized groups. There were 827 individual summary statements from these discussions, from 31 sources (communities and organized groups).

Overall, the Wikimedians in these conversations felt the following:

1. Wikimedians participating in Cycle 3 recognize the forces changing the way communities consume and share content. 16 of the 19 sources express the desire to create social media functionality or collaborate with existing social media platforms, as long as it is done credibly with an eye toward increasing functionality and attracting new users.
2. Some Wikimedians, on the whole, believe that new technology and products should be developed for more efficient search, Q&A, and chat functionality. This desire to move “beyond the encyclopedia” was echoed in their strong support for increased multimedia content, including audio and visual, with an emphasis on accessibility across languages. At the same time, however, a majority of participants were staunch in their support for the timeless appeal of the current encyclopedic model, and few expressed a desire to change its core capabilities and mandate. Instead, many respondents stressed that resources could be allocated toward sister projects to house more educational materials and experiment with other initiatives.
3. Because new forms of knowledge may be difficult to verify in traditional ways, they are in favor of establishing best practices for how to deal with classifying which sources should be considered reliable and verifiable. While a few respondents believe that it can be difficult to be inclusive while still maintaining high quality standards, others argue for including offline media sources, multimedia content, and non-traditional sources as a way to expand what the community agrees are acceptable sources. Twelve of the 31 sources were in favor of promoting oral history as its own Wikimedia project as long as it can be verified, with about five groups speaking against it. Verification can be conducted through experts, volunteers, and anonymous judges, and some think it should be backed with funding to support local scholars in conducting and collecting oral stories.
4. In order to counteract trends of misinformation, Wikimedians agree that clearer guidelines related to sources should be established and knowledge sources should be made more accessible. Lists of reliable sources should be curated and sites that consistently publish false information should be blacklisted or presented with a caveat or counterbalanced with another point of view. Constant verifiability and staying up-to-date on the most current methodologies for fact-checking are critical to upholding Wikipedia’s responsibility to present quality information. Participants agreed that bias in articles is a problem, but one that does not have an easy solution. And while it may not be possible to entirely root out bias, they stressed that AI tools can be integral in reinforcing reliability of content and reducing misinformation. Stricter editing controls can also be a way to reduce misinformation, through more active administrators and privileges. In spite of the challenges, neutrality is absolutely a tenet that the movement must strive for.
5. As the creation, presentation, and distribution of knowledge changes, new technological features will help serve community needs. These include 3D-modeling, virtual reality, voice-to-speech and other translation services, and augmented reality. Investment should continue to be made in mobile platforms as the internet evolves, including the ability to edit and create content on mobile devices. A few Wikimedians agree that AI can and should be integrated in thoughtful collaboration with the help of human editors as a tool to help with misinformation. Partnerships in the technology sector should be pursued to strengthen Wikimedia and persist amidst future technological developments.
6. In order for Wikimedia to meet its current and future readers’ needs in the midst of demographic and population shifts, some Wikimedians stress that attracting new users is crucial for the continuation of the movement. A few said that special efforts should be made to educate the general audience about how Wikipedia works, including all ages, geographies, and education levels. Some participants stress that raising awareness about how Wikipedia works and promoting it in low-awareness regions will strengthen its mission. Representation with respect to language and geography is crucial to Wikimedia’s continued success, including incorporating local viewpoints and accommodating readers from a non-Western background. Technological innovations may better attract new users by providing content in more accessible formats like mobile, and language pluralism and translation can help engage non-English speakers.

Overview

Over the past five months, the Movement Strategy Team has solicited responses and opinions from the community on what we want to build and achieve together as a movement by 2030. Simultaneously, research has been underway to give us a better understanding of the current knowledge landscape and the challenges and opportunities that we face as a movement. This global research effort includes:

• Conversations with more than 150 experts and partners from technology, knowledge, education, media, entrepreneurs, and other sectors, hosted by the Foundation and affiliates
• Research with potential readers and experts in places where Wikimedia projects are not well known or used: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Nigeria
• Research by age group in places where Wikimedia projects are well known and used: France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States

Cycle 3 community discussions were dedicated to considering the challenges identified by the research and exploring how Wikimedia may want to evolve or respond to changes in the world around us. As a way to become more familiar with the challenges, the strategy team invited discussion groups and communities to review the documents and sources, and think about how Wikimedia might address them. Each week, a new challenge and insight was posted, so that respondents could share how it connected to or changed their perspective on the future strategic direction. These challenges and feedback were used to inform the draft strategic direction.

Methodology

Cycle 3 community discussions posed five challenge questions, posted once a week from July 1 to August 13, 2017. Respective insights were then added to inform the conversations. The community (both organized groups and contributors) responded to these questions on local Wiki, in-person, or through virtual discussions. Discussion coordinators posted summary statements to the Meta source pages for each conversation. A spreadsheet of all cycle 3 sources is posted.

• Week 1 Challenge: How do our communities and content stay relevant in a changing world?
  • The Western encyclopedia model is not serving the evolving needs of people who want to learn.
  • Knowledge sharing has become highly social across the globe.
• Week 2 Challenge: How could we capture the sum of all knowledge when much of it cannot be verified in traditional ways?
  • Much of the world's knowledge is yet to be documented on our sites and it requires new ways to integrate and verify sources.
  • The discovery and sharing of trusted information have historically continued to evolve.
• Week 3 Challenge: As Wikimedia looks toward 2030, how can we counteract the increasing levels of misinformation?
  • Trends in misinformation are increasing and may challenge the ability for Wikimedians to find trustworthy sources of knowledge.
• Week 4 Challenge: How does Wikimedia continue to be as useful as possible to the world as the creation, presentation, and distribution of knowledge change?
  • Mobile will continue to grow. Products will evolve and use new technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality. These will change how we create, present, and distribute knowledge.
• Week 5 Challenge: How does Wikimedia meet our current and future readers’ needs as the world undergoes significant population shifts in the next 15 years?
  • As the world population undergoes major shifts, the Wikimedia movement has an opportunity to help improve the knowledge available in more places and to more people.
  • Readers in seven of our most active countries have little understanding of how Wikipedia works, is structured, is funded, and how content is created.

The strategy team manually tagged each summary statement for its main meaning, sentiment (positive or negative), key insights, and proposed solution to identify the most discussed issues and goals. Based on the most frequently occurring 5-10 key insights in each week’s challenge, the strategy team summarized the most common ideas and perspectives in this report. The strategy team then crafted an executive summary narrative of insights that was consistent with the most popular pieces of feedback and thinking from the summary statements.

Participant Statistics

We had 827 summary statements submitted by a total of 31 sources: 4 organized groups and 27 communities. 6% of the statements came from Track A and 94% came from Track B. The low participation from organized groups was expected, because this was convened in July, when many people were on summer holidays. This also led to organized group members participating in their local communities conversations on-wiki. People also reported to have read the challenges, aiming to incorporate these findings in their conversations as soon as the first draft of the strategic direction is published.

Here is a list of all of the communities who participated in Cycle 3:

Arabic Wikipedia, Bengali community, Chinese Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia Village Pump, Hindi Community one on one discussions, Hindi Community WhatsApp discussion, Italian Wikipedia, Maithili Wikimedians Strategy Meetup in Kathmandu, Marathi Community, Meta-Wiki, Polish Wikipedia, Punjabi Wikimedians Strategy Meetup in Chandigarh, Punjabi Wikimedians Strategy Meetup in Delhi, Punjabi Wikimedians Strategy Meetup in Patiala, Russian-speaking projects, Spanish Telegram group, Spanish Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Tamil Community, Urdu Community one on one discussions, Vietnamese Wikipedia, West Bengal Wikimedians User Group, Wikidata, WikiDonne's User Group, Wikimedia Bangladesh, Wikimedia Israel, Wikimedians of Nepal Strategy Meetup in Rajbiraj, Nepal

Here is a list of all of the organized groups who participated in Cycle 3:

West Bengal Wikimedians User Group, WikiDonne's User Group, Wikimedia Bangladesh, Wikimedia Israel

Key Findings

Note: Each bullet point includes in parentheses the number of groups and the number of statements to which that point applies.

Challenge #1: How do our communities and content stay relevant in a changing world?

(31 groups, 376 statements)

• Consensus not to change current encyclopedia model, in spite of perceived shortcomings (21, 56)
  • If encyclopedia model changes or worsens, I'm out of this movement.
  • Current Western encyclopedia model is not sustainable but not sure how it can be expanded.
  • Don't change encyclopedia model but consider sister projects to house more educational resources.
  • Encyclopedia model has limitations but that is why I like to contribute.
  • Classic encyclopedia will always be useful for future generations, regardless of changing times.
  • WP is already different than traditional encyclopedia, issue of self-definition of scope and identity.

• Majority express desire to create in-house or at least collaborate with existing social media platforms (19, 52)
  • Collaborate rather than compete with social media.
  • Create social functionality within articles to share, discuss, and ask questions.
  • Social media is not the end all be all; problem is with lack of good controllers, not contributors.
  • Integrate social media platforms with WP.
  • Outreach in emerging markets will draw people from other social media platforms to WP.
  • Need to use social media like Facebook to explain how WP works.
  • Open to social media element as long as we do it credibly.
  • Social media is superficial, prone to fake news, and we should not do it.

• Strong support for taking first step “beyond encyclopedia” with more multimedia content (15, 37)
  • Move beyond encyclopedia with videos and other wiki projects.
  • Build new education project as meaningful as WP for "beyond the encyclopedia" but under new name.
  • Videos provide a good distraction but are not as informative as written articles.
  • More AV content in multiple languages with focus on accessibility.
  • Give people tools to create videos of WP articles that are published to YouTube and Commons.
  • WP policy of not linking to commercial multimedia sources makes it less effective.
  • Visual engagement is not always right for WP but can be used for games and geocaching.
  • Multimedia contents should be created in different languages projects.

• Desire to develop technology and products for more efficient search, Q&A, and chat functionality (13, 24)
  • High readership is not a given forever, tides of popularity and relevance can change with new technology.
  • We have tools but people don't know they exist.
  • Invest in new technology and mobile apps, with social media and learning communities.
  • Create new platform to answer simple questions from Wikidata.
  • Publicity algorithms and AI that track past articles can benefit increased readership.

• Maintaining high quality and NPOV are seen as tantamount to catering to youth (12, 21)
  • WP should be antithesis to trust in individuals and remaining NPOV.
  • Create more transparency in citing sources for reliability.
  • Youth distrust of everyone who is not friend should not discount NPOV.
  • Youth seek knowledge in ways different from their parents and this is not new.
  • Hard to reach young people when base of knowledge on WP comes from older editors.
  • Youth need separate platform for engagement.

• Interest in global reach is limited by those who feel developing world is “not relevant” to them (11, 19)
  • Not our goal to help educate developing world, rather to help those for whom formal education has failed.
  • Encyclopedias by nature don't bring communities together, rather cater to their own language audiences.
  • Meaningless to support countries that don't have the infrastructure necessary for growing editor base.
  • Polish WP is not read in developing countries, so these problems are not relevant to us.
  • Provide learning and infrastructure support to communities in emerging markets.
  • In the low awareness region, we should find a way to promote Wikipedia and it's projects.

• Invest in sister projects on Wikimedia to support other initiatives (9, 13)
  • Other wiki projects can host content but need more development.
  • Promote sister projects as learning platforms.
  • More focus should be given to improve content in regional language Wikiprojects.

• Debate over how to incorporate oral history and primary source material (8, 26)
  • Cannot use primary sources, no matter if they are oral or written.
  • There is a problem of not accepting African sources is hard but don't want to lower quality.
  • Promote use of secondary material and make eligibility criteria more flexible.
  • Still need to carry out credible research work for oral history.

• Debate between simplifying articles with a “lead” and maintaining rigid “structured synthesis” model (6, 17)
  • Make WP more searchable by making articles shorter, adding lead summaries, and creating simplified WP.
  • Don't shorten articles just to make teenagers happy, as this does a disservice to the articles.
  • Website is difficult to navigate; articles need to be more simple to be more easily shared.

Challenge #2: How could we capture the sum of all knowledge when much of it cannot be verified in traditional ways?

(26 groups, 154 statements)

• In favor of establishing best practices for which sources should be considered verifiable and reliable (15, 30)
  • Allow for more plausibility and community-consensus in range of acceptable sources.
  • Community should not be arbiters of what is reliable.
  • Impossible to be both culturally inclusive and truthful.
  • People believe our information as it is and changing it would jeopardize credibility.
  • Effort should be made to digitize old media sources that aren't available online.
  • Should accept and archive audio, video, and other non-traditional sources.

• Strong desire for oral history to be promoted in its own Wiki project as long as it can be verified (12, 36)
  • Verify oral history by first-hand testimonials and anonymous judges.
  • Get newspapers to document oral cultures and use as reference.
  • Oral history project currently lacks volunteers and sufficient mobilization.
  • Oral history should be examined by experts and turned into reputable, referenced works.
  • Revert oral stories to author with disclaimer.
  • Consider different project for oral history without published sources.
  • Archive verified oral stories on Wiki Commons.
  • Work with GLAM to support new sister project to archive primary oral sources.

• In support of incorporating oral history into current Wikipedia project (11, 18)
  • Use WMF funds to support local scholars in an effort to record and publish oral history.
  • Effort should be made to document oral history through videos or documentaries.

• Against incorporating oral history into any Wikimedia project (5, 7)
  • No original research prevents conspiracy theories.
  • WP cannot be collection of primary sources, no matter whether oral or written.
  • Oral history is not accurate testimonies of events, but rather are made to suit storyteller.

• Involve experts in the verification of sources (4, 6)
  • Linguist, Scholars, Journalists and Literary figures should be involved in the movement.
  • Subject experts should be consulted for improving content and validating information.

Challenge #3: As Wikimedia looks toward 2030, how can we counteract the increasing levels of misinformation?

(24 groups, 137 statements)

• Clearer guidelines related to sources and accessibility of knowledge (14, 39)
  • Biased sources can be used but should be counterbalanced by other POV.
  • Focus on high-quality sources, and make indicating them mandatory.
  • Blacklist sources that consistently publish wrong or biased info.
  • Need multiple sources in order to validate content.
  • Curate list of and reach consensus within community of reliable sources.
  • Don’t rely strictly on online sources; find more reliable content from offline sources.
  • Current access to high-quality sources is economically limited.

• Constant verifiability and fact-checking of articles is crucial (10, 17)
  • Track developments in journalism and academia and learn from methods.
  • Create incentives for and adopt new fact checking methodologies.
  • Constant verification of content should be done to ensure quality.
  • It is our responsibility to make sure that the information is correct.

• Bias in articles is a problem, but not one that can be easily solved (8, 14)
  • It is impossible to control all sources and there is nothing we can do about bias.
  • Community should not be arbiters of right and wrong.
  • There is no one truth, all points of view have bias, just present in proportional way.
  • To write about “hot topics,” stick to basic facts and source neutral content as much as possible.

• AI tools can be integral in reinforcing reliability of content and reducing misinformation (8, 13)
  • AI can be aid to tracking and eradicating misinformation.
  • Derive a method to capture the quality metrics in easy accessible scores.
  • Alerts and notifications should be used to notify misinformation combat task force.
  • Create tool to compare text sources and warn about missing keywords.

• Total neutrality may be untenable but we should still strive for it  (7, 11)
  • There is no absolute neutrality. We can just try to be as neutral as possible.
  • We could spread neutrality policies better and make them easier to understand.
  • Wikipedia should not be right but neutral and this neutrality should be done in a democratic way.
  • Work with governments to fight or loosen the grip of censorship.

• Editing controls can be strengthened to stymie misinformation  (7, 10)
  • More experienced editors should have more control over veracity of content.
  • Different levels of protections and other administrative actions should prevent non-constructive edits.
  • Block users who consistently publish fake news.
  • Increase user base and raise number of active administrators.

Challenge #4: How does Wikimedia continue to be as useful as possible to the world as the creation, presentation, and distribution of knowledge change?

(15 groups, 74 statements)

• A bevy of new features will help serve community needs (6, 14)
  • 3D modeling and VR should be improved upon.
  • Voice-to-speech and other translation services needed in the future.
  • We can think about including virtual tour of places.
  • Use augmented reality to build photo database and ID objects from photos.
  • Content should be displayed based on user's search history.

• Investment should be made to improving mobile platform (6, 12)
  • Ability to edit WP and create content on mobile devices.
  • Mobile apps are good for quick editing but not for further creativity, emphasis should be on readability.
  • Internet is multiplatform and display should change to the way internet is evolving.

• Partnerships should be pursued to strengthen Wikipedia (5, 8)
  • Don’t compete with tech and AI platforms, collaborate with them.
  • Since WP doesn't control technology, must be flexible and also stick with inexpensive options.
  • Partner with archivists to preserve print materials.

• AI can and should be integrated with levity and thoughtful collaboration (4, 11)
  • AI should work on some pages and not others and also collaborate with human editors.
  • AI is good for projects with a lot of data.
  • WP is not eternal, AI can breathe new life into contributions.
  • AI contributions should not be validated without human support and review.

• Caution over integration of AI into Wikipedia projects (2, 9)
  • Human contributors will not be able to compete with nor understand how AI works.
  • Algorithms have inherent bias and minority views can be lost.

Challenge #5: How does Wikimedia meet our current and future readers’ needs as the world undergoes significant population shifts in the next 15 years?

(14 groups, 86 statements)

• Clear that attracting new users is important, but different opinions on best strategy (9, 18)
  • Global awareness media campaign about how Wikipedia works for general audience is worth supporting, but it shouldn't be focused on only one generation. Older generations may be easier to engage than youth.
  • Editors come and go and interests change as a result.
  • Hard to make new users aware of WP policies. There may be too many rules to follow.
  • Extend outreach to new users in all geographies and improve training for onboarding.
  • Necessary to promote knowledge and use of Wikipedia at all educational levels.

• Representation with respect to language and geography is crucial (8, 9)
  • All content must be accessible in other language wikis. Other language wikis are not well known.
  • We should be ready to give place to local views on wiki.
  • Wikimedia can't meet the current and future needs of our readers with anglo/northern view.

• Outreach to increase awareness of WP is critical to mission  (7, 14)
  • Increase understanding of how WP works and educate about missions and model.
  • Accommodate Gen Z and teach them how Wikipedia works and improve accessibility.
  • Promote Wikipedia in underdeveloped or under resourced regions.

• Technological innovations may better attract new users (5, 9)
  • We can do much better to provide information to readers in other formats.
  • We should improve the mobile application so that our readers can know that our content is editable.

• Focus on language pluralism and translation in new ways (4, 8)
  • We need to reach out to non-English speakers with the help of translation.
  • Support new language projects.