Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Cycle 2/Engaging in the Knowledge Ecosystem

What impact would we have on the world if we follow this theme?

This clearly affects the reputation of the encyclopedia, and how well its regarded as an authoritative and reliable source. Ideally, we can be the integration point between the expert/scholarly/academic/technical communities and the general public. Experts in their respective fields (especially the niche and obscure) are increasingly in need of effective communication to non-experts. Similarly, the public is increasingly in need of accurate portrayal of complex topics. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 14:12, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

-- While many people focused, commented, and centered on mostly Wikipedia, I suspect very few or no people commented on sister projects. How would following this theme make any difference to sister projects? For starters, Wikiversity houses creativity and originality but also needs more attention. More organizations should focus more on Wikiversity to create free courses and other kinds. If that happens, Wikiversity would make a great difference to the world. Otherwise, Wikiversity would sit there collecting bytes of dust, especially when Wikijournal is spun off. Speaking of Wikijournal, if it becomes a full-fledged project, multiple organizations, institutions, and universities would freely create newer, accessible, and free scholarly articles.

Commons can suit this theme very well because it is the central project hosting multimedia content for all other projects, like Wikipedia. If more visual arts organizations can follow this theme, then Commons can have more free multimedia content. However, OTRS service is still in shambles and needs to be reformed or something; I see the small community of Commons working on those issues.

How can Wikinews successfully team up with organizations interested in news? Wikinews is still struggling (immensely), yet it's still surviving. To survive by 2030, Wikinews community can pick up organizations not wanting to do anything with mainstream media. How about team of journalists who want to publish articles for free? Of course, it's harder because most journalists nowadays earn money as desired.

Wikidata, the free data-collecting project, still needs more organizations specializing in technology, which would further improve if it happens. Wikivoyage needs more organizations specialized in travel and/or history. Wikisource... boy, organizations would have difficulties trying to convert print material into text. No comment about other projects.

In summary, this theme would be futile and ineffective if most organizations center on Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata and give sister projects very little attention. Rather the theme should be revised to suit sister projects well, so organizations would give other sister projects greater chances and more attention than they have earned over the years. --George Ho (talk) 22:11, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

-- Re-thinking about this theme, universities can still exist, while Wikiversity either survives or flounders by 2030. Dictionaries can exist, while Wiktionary can still exist. Quote collectors can exist, while Wikiquote... I don't know, but it has fair use issues. Archive collectors can exist, while Wikisource... boy, technologically not as advanced as Internet Archive. Travel guides can exist, while Wikivoyage can exist. Wikinews won't compete with existing news organizations well obviously, but I hope it still exists... or transformed into a better project with similar goals but with wider scope. Look what happened to Wikitravel, which became Wikivoyage. Print textbooks exist and compete better, while Wikibooks... its growth is... well, not picking up to the level of other textbooks. Nevertheless, I hope it survives by 2030. --George Ho (talk) 22:44, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

How important is this theme relative to the other 4 themes? Why?

Although it is one of my passions, I suspect that its priority is below being a Respected Source of Knowledge (ultimate goal) and ensuring Healthy, Inclusive Communities (necessary foundation). In my opinion though, it is one of the most effective ways of achieving the Respected Knowledge goal. The project would fundamentally survive (though be impoverished) even if it failed to improve its global reach, and if it never improved its technology and augmentation. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 14:20, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Focus requires tradeoffs. If we increase our effort in this area in the next 15 years, is there anything we’re doing today that we would need to stop doing?

Overall this requires some re-prioritisation towards attracting expert contributors (as opposed to amateur) and collaborating with established knowledge groups (even though those groups may not fully share open access values). The greatest tradeoff with this priority is global reach. The majority of the established knowledge ecosystem is already heavily biased towards white male northern, anglophone dominated societies, so greater engagement with them makes the movement affected by their own bias problems as well as our own. It also risks tradeoffs with community health, in that it is important not to accidentally alienate the core of dedicated, but amateur contributors. Similarly we will have to be careful not to make some pages seem discourage improvements (i.e. even Features articles and externally reviewed can still be improved and and need to be kept in date) I think that some tradeoff is worth it however for the benefits that this would bring. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 15:01, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

-- As rewritten version of my answer to question 1, most business, institutions, organizations, and universities should stop treating Wikipedia as the central prize, possession, and network. Instead, they should refocus and restructure their own goals and then instead shift to other existing projects that suit their own needs. Journalists should stop treating Wikipedia like a news ticker and start creating more free original reporting for Wikinews, especially if they're unsatisfied with money, greed, and sensationalism of mainstream media. Universities and institutions should stop repressing their own original research skills for Wikipedia and start expressing original thought for Wikiversity and Wikijournal. Don't know what else to say about other projects in this question.

However, this answer should not encourage treating the Foundation like a monopoly. Speaking of monopoly, I hope the Foundation's projects don't monopolize their own competitors. ...Actually, if editors found their own interests not well-treated in Wikipedia, they should stop editing Wikipedia, stop treating Wikipedia like the only encyclopedic resource, and start creating their own encyclopedias, print or online. --George Ho (talk) 22:35, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

-- Forgot Wikibooks... To follow this theme, more companies and organizations should stop killing trees to produce textbooks and start conserving and saving them. Therefore, they can shift to Wikibooks to create free online textbooks and all that more collaboratively. --George Ho (talk) 22:46, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

What else is important to add to this theme to make it stronger?

In my opinion the primacy is funnelling contributions to the encyclopedia and other central projects without accidentally making the relevant sections too diffuse to maintain critical mass. This is an obvious place to suggest developing protocols, tech, support, and possibly grants for making it easier to interface with other ecosystem communities.

• Some centralised support for outside contributors (like PLOS's Topic page wiki).
• Development of academic WikiJournals for publishing (and possible co-publishing) of academic articles (WikiJournal of Medicine as a flagship example of possible expansion to other areas)

T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 14:52, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

A bit more focus on other parts of the knowledge ecosystem besides Wikipedia would help too. Encyclopaedias are a small part of the knowledge ecosystem. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:15, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Who else will be working in this area and how might we partner with them?

Editathons and Wikipedians in residence seem to have been quite productive for this. Possibly also support for experiences trainers in editing to train/advise partners. More focussed support may be possible by making hybrid platforms that bridge the gap between Wikipedia projects and possible partners e.g.:

• Better metrics and measurements of work done for people's CVs and KPIs to 'officially' recognise and reward contribution.
• Dual publishing as academic articles and Wikipedia pages, e.g. PLOS Topic pages the scholarly WikiJournal publishing model currently being experimented with by Wiki.J.Med.
• Support systems for easier external peer review (without dual publishing) e.g. by BMJ

Obvious partnership targets include:

• Open access scholarly publishers (e.g. BMC, expanding collaboration with PLOS)
• Possible, careful collaboration with non-open-access scholarly publishers that nevertheless care about knowledge disseminatin (e.g Nature education and Scitable, Evolution: Education and Outreach)
• Other communities of experts (e.g. Cochrane)
• Academic societies (e.g. The Royal Society, Australian Society for Microbiology)

T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 14:31, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

GLAMs, universities and EDU, Academy, TED, Open Street Map, CC network, EDU Groups, GreyNet. -- On behalf of Wikipedians of Prague, --Petra Pejšová (WMCZ) (talk) 18:47, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Impact on happiness and cultural development of people

Quite an open question

• https://medium.com/@Hverwayen/the-impact-of-cultural-heritage-creating-a-common-language-28cba0e1af0b
• https://impkt.tools/
• http://sharecare.nu/aarhus-2017/

(links by Merete Sanderhoff at https://www.unibocconi.it/wps/wcm/connect/ev/eventi/eventi+bocconi/l+open+data+per+gli+obiettivi+di+sviluppo+sostenibile ). --Nemo 10:00, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Other

Feedback from the Central Eastern European Wikimedia Community

In a Facebook poll, 9 people from the CEE group rated this theme as the second *most* important to our movement's future, after community health. Shani Evenstein 20:08, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Feedback from the Wikipedia & Medicine Community

In a Facebook poll, 2 people rated this theme as important, making it the second most important theme for the group. Shani Evenstein 20:13, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Feedback from the GLAM-Wiki community

In a Facebook poll, 5 people from the GLAM-Wiki global group rated this theme as most important to our movement's future, making it one of the top 2 most important themes to this group. Shani Evenstein 20:29, 13 June 2017 (UTC)