Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Sources/Cycle 3/French Wikipedia
Information
editWhat group or community is this source coming from?
| name of group | French-speaking community |
| virtual location (page-link) or physical location (city/state/country) | w:fr:Wikipédia:Mouvement Wikimedia/Stratégie 2017 |
| Location type (e.g. local wiki, Facebook, in-person discussion, telephone conference) | on-wiki |
| # of participants in this discussion (a rough count) | 20 |
Summary
edit- Key Insight
- 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.
- 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.
- Trends in misinformation are increasing and may challenge the ability for Wikimedians to find trustworthy sources of knowledge.
- 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.
- 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.
- Overall (either)
- supportive
- concern
- neutral
| Line | Week # | Key insights | Statements summary | Overall | keyword |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | A | Who are these so-called experts, what research have they carried out? What are their publications, profiles? Fuucx, Erànàë | concern | experts |
| 2 | 1 | A | For reading articles more easily, there is Vikidia, the encyclopedia for 8-13 years old individuals, and when people want to learn something more deeply, Wikiversity stands out as the right place. Tpe.g5.stan | concern | knowledge format |
| 3 | 1 | A | What these findings suggest is to change the pillars of Wikipedia because not everyone can understand them. The 5 pillars should not be change. Tpe.g5.stan | concern | pillars |
| 4 | 1 | B | The fact that young people would trust no one but their friends on social networks is not a sufficient reason for throwing out the principles of neutrality, point of view and referencing. Tpe.g5.stan | concern | pillars |
| 5 | 1 | A | These findings are biased. they does not take into account the population that has access to Internet without being ultra-connected, what are its expectations and needs, how do they perceive Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, etc.? Tpe.g5.stan | neutral | bias |
| 6 | 1 | A | It's hard to express myself, I'm a westerner, Wikipedia and the tools around match my needs. LJouvenaux | neutral | West region |
| 7 | 1 | B | We focus on what is trendy, but the trends change very quickly. What does not go out of fashion is the need for knowledge, the encyclopedias are as old as the writing. Do we want Wiki to be a quality symbol or a clickbait? Erànàë | concern | trends |
| 8 | 1 | A | It seems that we want to turn Wikipedia into Wikiversity. Erànàë We should not confuse an encyclopedia and a learning platform providing courses. A course is above all a non-encyclopaedic work. Jpgibert, Fuucx | neutral | wikiversity |
| 9 | 1 | B | If notable sources is of fewer value when compared to a friend's opinion, then this cannot be helped. This is the same thing with conspiracy believers who cling on to what they believe to be true. Erànàë Jpgibert | neutral | sources |
| 10 | 1 | A | The key insights are related to the same profile, a child from a wealthy family with a smartphone, one living in a rich country, the other one in a poor country. The less wealthy or the people willing to explore knowledge are dismissed. We are ignoring a part of the audience, those who see fit in the current form of Wikipedia. | neutral | bias |
| 11 | 1 | A | For a quick answer to a general problem, a good lead section should be sufficient as it is both short and extensive (adding an infobox could be even better). Erànàë | supportive | quick answer |
| 12 | 1 | A | For a quick answer to a specific problem, we could imagine a keyword-powered search tool that can retrieve information from infobox and eventually display information from the lead section with a link to the article. This could be done using chatbots for example. Erànàë | supportive | quick answer |
| 13 | 1 | A | If one wants to improve the pedagogy part then we should focus on Wikiversity instead of alterating Wikipedia. Erànàë We could improve Wikiversity even more and try to think of a WikiCourse which could be a platform providing MOOCs. Jpgibert, Fuucx | concern | wikiversity |
| 14 | 1 | A | In the context of partnerships with institutions / experts, we could try to become the distance learning platform of the universities, higher education, secondary schools. Erànàë | supportive | partnerships |
| 15 | 1 | A | Concerning infrastructure problems specific to these regions, it is necessary to extend Wikipedia Zero or Afripedia project. We could imagine partnerships with NGOs to cover the costs of computer equipment and even consider Raspberry Pi devices. Erànàë | supportive | infrastructure |
| 16 | 1 | B | Regarding how people exchange information, we could build widgets for sharing a short excerpt of an article on social networks. Erànàë | supportive | features |
| 17 | 1 | B | For increasing Wikimedia reach we could think of social profiles for French-speaking audience. These social profiles could be share pieces of information similarly to what is done on Wikipedia home page: article of the day, did you know?, image of the day, quote of the day, etc. Erànàë | supportive | social networks |
| 18 | 1 | B | A case of use of social networks could be for example a SnapChat profile broadcasting medias from Commons or a Twitter profile displaying information from the lead section of article. Erànàë | supportive | social networks |
| 19 | 1 | A | It would be better to provide as much doorways as possible for people to access knowledge while creating bridges between WMF projects, instead of shrinking the knowledge down to a certain size which would suit a certain audience but would also ignore another one: experts, curious, youth, old people, persons with disabilities, etc. Jpgibert | concern | audience |
| 20 | 1 | B | It is important to develop teacher training in the use of Wikipedia and other tools especially in regions of the world that have not yet acquired the reflex to seek information and verify it. Jpgibert | supportive | teachers |
| 21 | 1 | B | If young people trust their networks more than any other source, it is because they are without criticism. This is a problem of education and culture and the role of Wikipedia and Wikimedia in general is not to substitute local educational systems. Jpgibert | concern | sources |
| 22 | 1 | B | We should try to have Wikipedia inserted within school curriculum and also within teachers training curriculum. Erànàë | supportive | teachers |
| 23 | 1 | A | We should encourage editors to cut out lengthy main articles into smaller pieces: sub-articles. A main article should give an understanding of the topic as a whole, without drowning the reader in information. It is the sub-article's role to deepen the topic. Erànàë | supportive | articles length |
| 24 | 1 | A | Since French is among the biggest the Wikipedia as well as the most spoken languages, having main articles less lengthy would allow non-native speakers to have access to information, but also to translate it adequately into their language and eventually build and enrich their own Wikipedia. Erànàë | supportive | community |
| 25 | 1 | A | An encyclopedic article must be a structured and intelligible synthesis of knowledge and not just a heap of undrinkable knowledge. Erànàë | supportive | articles length |
| 26 | 1 | A | The movement has internal problems that need to be solved before calling on experts who, for the most part, are distrustful of gathering all the notable human knowledge together in one place. Among these internal problems are black-white gap, men-women gap, harassing issues, etc. Bamlifa | concern | gaps |
| 27 | 1 | A | It is better to speak directly with the interested parties than with "right-thinking people" who claim to know better than the people concerned what is right for themselves. Fuucx | concern | experts |
| 28 | 1 | A | Africa is forgotten, we should have more Chapters and Usergroups on this continent along with important outreach programmes for informing Africans and helping them access Wikimedia projects. Bamlifa Fuucx | concern | Africa, gap |
| 29 | 1 | A | Africa is the next objective of Wikipedia in French. For the global Wikimedia movement this may vary depending on the project but one of our main axes must be the countries of the "South" in the broad sense: this is where the new contributors will be, where we most progress has to be made, etc.Tpe.g5.stan | supportive | under-represented community |
| 30 | 2 | C | Oral tradition is actually something very important to deal with. Projects such as LEAP Africa could be used as sources. Tpe.g5.stan | supportive | oral tradition |
| 31 | 2 | C | Due to the lack of media to serve as a secondary source many articles such as those on African personalities who would have been eligible without problem in Europe are deleted.Tpe.g5.stan | supportive | oral tradition |
| 32 | 2 | C | Hopefully the development of the Internet in Africa will allow the emergence of new media, as well as the arrival of new contributors. Tpe.g5.stan | supporrive | community |
| 33 | 2 | C | There is indeed a problem in using African knowledge or those of other cultures that are poorly documented by secondary sources. But I really think we should not fundamentally change our rules or pillars to deal with this problem. Jean-Christophe BENOIST | concern | pillars |
| 34 | 2 | C | The way to go - for WMF or chapters - is to promote secondary sources to address the issue through appropriate actions or communications. Once the secondary sources have been created, they can be used by Wikipedians. Jean-Christophe BENOIST | concern | secondary sources |
| 35 | 2 | C | It is not correct, in my opinion, to speak of bias in Wikipedia. The bias exists, but it is that of the sources and not that of Wikipedia. Jean-Christophe BENOIST | concern | bias |
| 36 | 2 | C | Wikipedia should reflect a faithful and balanced image of notable secondary sources, and their proportional bias. If not, who will decide which "bias" of sources must be addressed and which should not be? WMF? Jean-Christophe BENOIST | concern | secondary sources |
| 37 | 2 | C | There is room for another oral encyclopaedic project (WikiOral) with features to be defined. DePlusJean | supportive | oral tradition |
| 38 | 2 | C | The problem with the oral is that there is no guarantee of anything. Jpgibert | supportive | credibility |
| 39 | 2 | C | It will be difficult to make an oral tradition a credible source for an encyclopedia. Jpgibert | neutral | credibility |
| 40 | 2 | C | However, it is possible to gather memories of the people in order to extract subjective information which must be considered as such. But for me, this role is not that of Wikimedia. Jpgibert | neutral | credibility |
| 41 | 2 | C | It would be possible to make a specific project (WikiOral) that would gather audio or visual interviews via Commons to serve as support for Wikinews conarticles or basic research on Wikiversity Jpgibert Psychoslave | neutral | oral tradition |
| 42 | 2 | C | Let us not forget that Wikipedia is meant to be a container of knowledge and not a producer of knowledge. Jpgibert | concern | knowledge |
| 43 | 1 | A | These experts have not received enough guidance to provide a relevant feedback because obviously these experts are not aware of other existing Wikimedia projects. Psychoslave | neutral | experts |
| 44 | 1 | A | Certainly an encyclopedia is not the appropriate format for all kinds of knowledge sharing. However, we already have other projects, such as Wikinews, Wikibook and Wikiversity for other forms of knowledge sharing. Psychoslave | neutral | WMF projects |
| 45 | 1 | A | I am very much in favor of the foundation putting more technical and communication means to develop its other projects. This does not require to thoroughly alter the objectives of Wikipedia. Psychoslave | against | wikipedia principles |
| 46 | 1 | A | It would be good to create dedicated projects tailored for the question and answer type of interaction, focusing primarily on non-English-speaking audience | neutral | WMF projects |
| 47 | 1 | A | Improve Mediawiki to serve as a platform for reviewing and curating unpublished research work: for example, include a feature for selecting/commenting pieces of text. Psychoslave | neutral | features |
| 48 | 2 | C | In my opinion, oral recordings are as reliable as writing. The difference is maybe the possibility of misinterpretation or ambiguities. Psychoslave | neutral | oral tradition |
| 49 | 1 | A | We should improve sister projects integration and visibility while guiding users to the project where their contribution will be most relevant. Psychoslave | neutral | sister projects |
| 50 | 1 | B | If "reliable sources" are often rejected, it is because of their lack of neutrality, for example in the elections in the USA. Wikipedia is sometimes perceived as non-neutral and an effort should be made to make Wikipedia as neutral as possible. Jean trans h+ | supportive | neutrality |
| 51 | 2 | C | Moreover, the eligibility criteria for articles seem to me too restrictive on French-speaking Wikipedia, compared to other Wikipedia, for example, English-speaking. This clearly hampers the representativeness of the encyclopedia. Jean trans h+ | neutral | eligibility criteria |
| 52 | 2 | C | In French Wikipedia, discussion during the deletion process is a joke: in fact nobody discusses and the majority decides. Jean trans h+ Jpgibert Erànàë | neutral | deletion policy |
| 53 | 2 | C | If we want to introduce oral tradition as sources of wikipedia, we venture into areas where the saying goes, the rumor is law. The current reputatiyn of Wikipedia a comes from its ability to sort through the sources of information. Jpgibert | neutral | notoriety |
| 54 | 2 | C | To hide behind the fact that in Africa and other regions knowledge is mainly oral and say that it is not necessary to carry out a credible research work is an intellectual "scam" and it is even an insult for them I think. Jpgibert | concern | oral tradition |
| 55 | 2 | C | We need to Initiate projects to gather information from stories and then compile them into published books. These publications may serve as sources. Trizek The WMF could encourage such projects. CreativeC38 | supportive | publication |
| 56 | 2 | C | In the context of the Wikipedia encyclopaedia which follows a purpose of circle of knowledge (enyclo- pedia), I have nothing against integrating recorded knowledge as other recorded knowledge can stand in contradiction, as with contradictory opinions. Lionel Scheepmans | neutral | oral tradition |
| 57 | 2 | C | As for Wikiversity, however, these might be different. Scientific production, especially in the humanities and social sciences, is recognized as a place where ideas and personal points of view are confront in according to specific procedural rules. Lionel Scheepmans | neutral | wikiversity |
| 58 | 2 | C | I do not see any point in changing the rules on which Wikipedia was built upon as there is a risk of distorting the project and making it useless in the end. Lionel Scheepmans | concern | Wikipedia pillars |
| 59 | 2 | C | On the other hand, many things must evolve from a technical and organizational perspective in order to make the encyclopedia more accessible, in terms of content (image, video, voice synthesis) and in terms of editing (Visual editor, conflict moderation system, automation of bibliographic and citation tasks as this has already been initiated). Lionel Scheepmans | neutral | features |
| 60 | 2 | C | Wikipedia is not meant and should not be used for oral culture but should facilitate as much as possible access, both for reading and editing, to people coming from an oral culture and eager to discover this tools specifically designed for written culture. Lionel Scheepmans | concern | oral culture |
| 61 | 3 | E | Make sure that the fight against misinformation does not become disinformation. The manipulation has always existed and in my opinion will always exist. It is therefore necessary to continue to be open to ideas in all their diversity and to continue to use only quality sources. Fuucx | neutral | quality sources |
| 62 | 3 | E | This challenge 3 conflicts with the previous two. How can we fight the different systems of misinformation that have evolved mainly on the web, while questioning the classical (improperly designated "western") model of the encyclopedia? How do we fight misinformation, while we suggest other types of ways of sharing knowledge via messaging apps and social networks, which are the main vectors of these misinformation? Kirtap | concern | contradiction |
| 63 | 3 | E | Moving away from reliable sourcing systems, stemming from traditional channels, and moving towards solutions such as gathering knowledge from oral tradition, or giving more credit to individuals instead of “reliable” organizations, are ways of increasing the risk of misinformation, because these systems are more vulnerable to misinformation. Kirtap | concern | contradiction |
| 64 | 3 | E | The classic encyclopedia model, as adopted by Wikipedia, has proved its worth in terms of stability and adaptation. However, in order to combat misinformation, only a stable foundation such as this current model makes it possible to identify the risks and to counter them, not "volatile" models of disseminating information via social networks with all the risks that they involve. Kirtap | concern | stability |
| 65 | 1 | A | Wikiversity and its other brother projects, should probably be supported by an institution and a community distinct from that of Wikipedia, but still keeping a strong link with the encyclopedia through the use and development of MediaWiki software. A project like open street map grows much better than Wikiversity or any other sister project while it does not benefit from an institution as strong and as rich as the Wikimedia foundation. Lionel ScheepmansFuucx | neutral | WMF projects autonomy |
| 66 | 3 | E | Two Wikipedia principles, when they are applied, naturally and effectively prevent fake news: Wikipedia:Reliable sources and undue weight and the use of secondary sources before using factual content. These rules should be applied more effectively and promoted instead of inventing new rules to fight fake news. Jean-Christophe BENOIST Tpe.g5.stan | neutral | existing rules |
| 67 | 3 | E | Wikipedia cannot become THE source of truth since every truth is relative to an era and to every individual. Wikipedia must remain a place of compilation of all actual facts and of all points of view on these facts in a proportionate way. Lionel ScheepmanJean-Christophe BENOIST | concern | Wikipedia role |
| 68 | 3 | E | Choosing misinformation as a challenge to be discussed is a bad idea. It would be better to think about opening up Wikipedia to new users, without changing its nature, and improving our principles of governance in order to address issues of notoriety in the most democratic way. Lionel Scheepman | concern | democracy |
| 69 | 3 | E | Wikipedia should not be right but neutral and this neutrality should be made by as many individuals as possible in a democratic way. Lionel Scheepman. Wikipedia is not a democracy and in fact is not organized as such. As for its openness to participation, it is guided by the pillars. Kirtap | neutral | democracy |
| 70 | 3 | E | What will become of minority opinions? What will become of the subjects that are less or not covered by media? How to avoid falling into the intellectual confinement to which Google and Facebook submit us with their algorithms able to choose the information most relevant to us basing on our ideas and our habits thus shrinking our vision of the world to our small person? Lionel Scheepman | neutral | democracy |
| 71 | 3 | E | Even if the idea is not to entrust Wikipedia to a single AI that will do everything on its own, it is necessary to think now about the limits that will be given to each other and the place that we want to give to Automated systems. Will there be any review? Who's going to do it ? What will become of the principle of editing which is the heart of the system today? Who will have authority over whom? Lionel Scheepman | neutral | wikipedia principles |
| 72 | 4 | F | AI may be machines, but machine learning does not allow them to be more objective than us. They do not have the ability to grasp and explain the concepts. Jean trans h+ | favorable | IA importance |
| 73 | 4 | F | Be careful not to judge the possible abilities of AI, machine learning systems work completely differently. They are not "programmed" but "trained" from patterns. In the near future, they will probably be less sensitive to the biases you mention. Jean trans h+ | favorable | automated transalation |
| 74 | 4 | F | I will find it damaging to end up having a Wikipédia for all with only "views" from translations on the fly. Why would an article on a topic be treated the same way by an American, a French, a Congolese, a Vietnamese or a Brazilian editor? Jean trans h+.
If we do not want to use these tools, this will mean in the medium term the end of Wikipedia. When encyclopedias generated by AIs will gradually emerge, human contributors will be unable to cope with them from a quantitative and qualitative point of view. KirtapI Overall agree [with Kirtap], but it should be on a case by case basis. For example, Google has already helped us, and for a long time, putting us in top results. Jean-Christophe BENOIST |
favorable | partnerships |
| 75 | 4 | F | Automated article creation could or should go through a stage of human-AI cooperation where an AI would submit proposals created out of automatic processing, and then human editors could choose whether to add or modify them. In some areas requiring less expertise such as sports or geographic information pages, AI may work freely. Jean trans h+ | favorable | human/AI |
| 76 | 4 | F | The AI is constantly evolving and one day it will no longer be possible to understand how it works. But entrusting the writing of articles to an algorithm, however complex it may be, amounts to entrusting the reins to one person. What I like about Wikipedia is the plurality of points of view, the opinions that make a debate happen, editing wars, and so on. Jpgibert | favorable | opinion diversity |
| 77 | 4 | F | What will become of minority opinions? What will become of the subjects that are less or not covered by media? How to avoid falling into the intellectual confinement to which Google and Facebook submit us with their algorithms able to choose the information most relevant to us basing on our ideas and our habits thus shrinking our vision of the world to our small person? Jpgibert | concern | bias |
| 78 | 4 | F | Even if the idea is not to entrust Wikipedia to a single AI that will do everything on its own, it is necessary to think now about the limits that will be given to each other and the place that we want to give to Automated systems. Will there be any review? Who's going to do it ? What will become of the principle of editing which is the heart of the system today? Who will have authority over whom? Jpgibert | concern | roles |
| 79 | 4 | F | AI may be machines, but machine learning does not allow them to be more objective than us. They do not have the ability to grasp and explain the concepts. Jpgibert, Kirtap Be careful not to judge the possible abilities of AI, machine learning systems work completely differently. They are not "programmed" but "trained" from patterns. In the near future, they will probably be less sensitive to the biases you mention. Jean trans h+ | concern | bias |
| 80 | 4 | F | I will find it damaging to end up having a wikipedia for all with only "views" from translations on the fly. Why would an article on a topic be treated the same way by an American, a French, a Congolese, a Vietnamese or a Brazilian editor? Jpgibert | concern | automated translation |
| 81 | 4 | F | If we do not want to use these tools, this will mean in the medium term the end of Wikipedia. When encyclopedias generated by AIs will gradually emerge, human contributors will be unable to cope with them from a quantitative and qualitative point of view. Jean trans h+ | favorable | evolution |
| 82 | 4 | F | Wikipedia is not eternal, if it does not evolve, it is strongly likely to be outdated. AI can give immense creative power to human contributors and free them from creating less interesting articles. If all the articles of cities and towns around the world could be created automatically who would complain? Jean trans h+ | favorable | evolution |
| 83 | 4 | F | We already have a project that will only be generated by the AI in the near future, it's Wikidata. Kirtap | favorable | wikidata |
| 84 | 4 | F | The IA on Wikipedia must be strictly supervised by contributors; We can see that with automatic translation, without human intervention to correct these translations, the translations are not valid. Kirtap | concern | automated translation |
| 85 | 4 | F | A global Wikipedia translated into all languages, is not a progress, but a terrible regression. We would be ignoring the specificities of each linguistic community. Are we going to dismiss 20 years of human editing in order to globalize the encyclopedia, and standardize knowledge? Kirtap | concern | multilinguism |
| 86 | 4 | F | Concerning other projects, like Wikisource or Wikidata, it is obvious that in terms of productivity, AI will be an indispensable auxiliary, but for generating data that are strongly framed by editors. Kirtap | concern | interwikis |
| 87 | 4 | F | Wikipedia has been thought for humans. Going to a highly automated or even fully automated version is a paradigm shift not obvious to accept. Jpgibert | neutral | evolution |
| 88 | 5 | H | It seems like we take it for granted that in France everybody knows, or uses Wikipedia and some of the other WMF projects, which I am not at all convinced. While it is possible that large urban centers use mostly wikipedia and other projects for information, I am much more doubtful about smaller urban centers Fanchb29 | concern | outreach in France |
| 89 | 5 | G | English language poses an important issue regarding the democracy within the Wikimedia movement because a number of contributors are excluded from international discussions (Wikimedia, Wikidata, Commons, bug report, ...) that are conducted in English. If Spanish becomes the second most spoken language, the situation could be accentuated. Pamputt Jpgibert | concern | multilinguism |
| 90 | 5 | G | I dream of a system where each contributor would write in his / her mother tongue during a discussion and Mediawiki would translate on the fly for the reader. Thus, a discussion could take place in English, French, Russian, Mandarin, Arabic, Indonesian and Italian, but the Spanish-speaking reader would see the whole discussion translated on the fly in Spanish. Pamputt
This a very complex matter because discussions among users often refer to many cultural expressions and elements that are not always translatable or have no equivalent in other languages. Jpgibert |
concern | multilinguism feature |
| 91 | 5 | G | An effort could be made on Commons concerning language management. Most of the time when I search for pictures or drawings, I have to juggle between languages to find what suits me based on the descriptions often available in only one language. And it would also be interesting that to display the names of the categories in the language of the user. Jpgibert | concern | multilinguism, Commons |
| 92 | 5 | H | I agree with the study’s conclusions and think it is important to accompany readers "GenZ", to let them know how our projects work, where they come from and why they were created. Improving accessibility, including on mobile, working on a relevant use of Wikipedia for teaching | favorable | Generation Z |
| 93 | 5 | H | On the other hand, I do not agree with partnering with a specific company as this could jeopardize the independence of the content, finances, etc. For example, at a certain time, partnering with Orange had made a lot of noise and sparked a number of negative reactions. Tpe.g5.stan | concern | autonomy |
| 94 | 5 | G | Regarding the evolution of the world population, from a Francophone point of view: the growth of the population combined with literacy and access to the Internet in Africa make it a region for "recruiting" contributors, and at the same time one of the places with many articles "red links". Tpe.g5.stan | favorable | Africa |
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