What a Wonderful Crowd

Announcing Jimmy Wales, the man who started it all (©Wikipedia)

As I had already announced in March last week, Red Baron attended Wikimania 2014, the 10th world meeting of the Wikipedia Community in London. My readers know I am an active author and editor in Wikipedia Deutschland, although the number of my "edits" has decreased with time. 

The main reason is our relatively active local scene - we meet monthly for a Stammtisch - so over the last years, my peers and I have written and thoroughly edited many missing articles about Freiburg's people, buildings, and history.

The phenomenon of a decreasing number of active contributors to Wikipedia is felt worldwide. Therefore, the Wikipedia Foundation is making significant efforts to "recruit" new authors. Before I dig into this topic further, let me briefly mention other subjects discussed in London.

Free Access to Information

Jimmy presenting the state of the Wiki (©Wikipedia)

In his opening speech, Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, congratulated the Community, i.e., us, the contributors, for building the most excellent encyclopedia the world has ever seen. Everybody should have free access to all knowledge everywhere.

More than 2000 cramped in the Barbican Auditorium.
Red Baron knows where he sits (A hint: Look for ample legroom) (©Wikipedia)

Thus, by providing considerable human and financial resources, the Wikipedia Foundation is helping developing countries with the writing of their online encyclopedia. Here, Wikipedia's idea to make all information available to everyone is seen in the particular aspect of education.

Education, yes, but not like this (©Wikipedia)

In South Africa, pupils and students using their cell phones (everyone seems to own one) now have free access to Wikipedia's Internet site. The project is called Wikipedia Zero and will be extended to other developing countries.

Copyright

(©Wikipedia)

(©Wikipedia?)

Wikipedia's call for open access to all information is permanent. One of the biggest problems is copyright, e.g., with pictures.

As an "illustration, " an ape's by-now-famous selfie was the running gag at the conference. A curious female macaque had snatched the camera of a wildlife photographer. The camera found later was loaded with several weird photos the ape had shot. One of the pictures was a selfie that a Wikipedia author later used to illustrate an article, resulting in the photographer requesting royalties for "his?" picture. Even the Badische Zeitung ran a column about the story.

Wikidata

A big topic discussed at the conference was Wikidata. The system of storing and, particularly, finding pictures in Wikipedia could be more convenient. The photos are stored in a Commons database in categories (or sometimes not), from which they can be drawn to illustrate articles. 

When I need a picture, I upload a photo that I took myself into Commons (hopefully into a correct category) and then place it into my article. Some community members prefer to shoot perfect photos rather than write articles. However, finding those excellent photos in Commons is sometimes difficult for me and others, particularly if they are labeled only in a language like Danish or Greek or uploaded with no description.

Here, Wikidata should help with the focus on structured data called items, which could be abstract concepts like love and hate or actual objects like a kitchen or a broom. Each item has a unique identifier in all Wikipedias and a page on which all item data are collected.

For a demonstration of Wikidata, you can go to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page.
Search for the item Edison by typing the name into the search field. A list will open. There, you chose Thomas Alva Edison with the identifier Q8743, and his page of collected data will open. When you scroll to the end of the page, you will see all Wikipedias in which the inventor has an article.

You may be disappointed. Wikidata is a database, not an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. The work of extracting data from existing sources is mainly done by bots. These robots are small computer programs searching for specific information on items from various sources. Although they will not err in their search, the information they find may be inconsistent, wrong, or incomplete. 

Here is where human intelligence must come in. The Community is asked to correct and complete the data. You see fields on the page for doing this, and you may be tempted to do so. But didn't you read somewhere that Thomas Alva Edison was a Freemason?

Red Baron in a red polo shirt (what else?) in the back, trying to keep his mouth shut
 in a discussion on Commons and Wikidata (©Sebastian)

As one speaker said, "Wikidata is only at its beginning; it is fascinating, unpredictable, and full of unexplored potential."

New Authors

You will encounter a couple of hurdles when you want to join the Community and contribute to the open encyclopedia. Creating or working on articles in Wikipedia is not straightforward. Presently, you will compose your article in Wikitext, a typing platform that contains elements of HTML. As a beginner, you sometimes make your experience the hard way, but hopefully, you will learn by doing as Red Baron.

One way to overcome the entrance hurdle is to introduce a Wikipedia Visual Editor. Although this looks promising, its implementation could be better because people work on different platforms. Experienced writers in Wikipedia use Wikitext only; others even hate the Visual Editor because, in their opinion, it will compromise the fine-tuning of articles.

Another way to attract new people into the Community is to address their gaming instinct. Newbies should consider creating articles as a game and editing as fun. With time, they encounter experienced colleagues, and they will receive medals for their participation in Wikipedia.

Give 'em medals (©Wikipedia)

For me, the most promising approach to gaining new authors is the automatic creation of stub articles containing a minimum of information with the help of bots. Let me explain: a bot will go through lists of all villages, including the smallest hamlet, and place formatted stub articles in Wikipedia for those un-covered places. People frustrated that their place of living does not have an article in Wikipedia yet may now sit down and type the missing information into the existing stub article.

Conclusions

In closing Wikimania 2014, Jim Wales honored some people, especially the organizers, for a well-done job.

Wikipedian of the year is Ihor Kostenko, a Ukrainian student who was shot in the head at Maidan Square in Kyiv. He has written 280 articles for Ukrainian Wikipedia.

(©Wikipedia)

Red Baron, swimming in a sea of Wiki freaks, learned fascinating new things at Wikimania 2014. I had a good life in London with the Community. What a wonderful crowd!

... and my morning delight

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