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Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Sources/Cycle 3/Summary July 17 to 23

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This is a short summary overview of the Source pages on Meta from 17th to 23rd July of Cycle 3 discussion. Shortcuts used here rely on the established language and project code and languages are grouped alphabetically. For example, the Arabic language Wikipedia is Ar. To provide a rough sense of activities on the projects and platforms the Source pages summarize, the full summary by community text indicates how many source statements were available and therefore taken into account at the time of writing. (3s), for example, means 3 statements were available on the referenced source page at the time the summary was drafted.

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

Key insights edit

The Western encyclopedia model is not serving the evolving needs of all 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? edit

Key insights edit

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.

  • On French Wikipedia (5s) participants said that changing the rules on which Wikipedia was built upon is a risk of distorting the project and making it useless in the end. (§Fr1.58) Wikipedia is not meant and should not be used for oral culture but should facilitate as much as possible access. (§Fr1.60)
  • On Hebrew Wikipedia (1s), community member said that almost all human knowledge can be documented using traditional means. (§He1.6)

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

Key insight edit

Trends in misinformation are increasing and may challenge the ability for Wikimedians to find trustworthy sources of knowledge.

  • Members of Bengali community (4s) discussed that we can consider govt. registered newspaper sources as credible in the respective local Wikipedia (§Bn1.17) and a designated guideline/common practice to check the fact should be made. (§Bn1.18) One participant thinks that it entirely depends on the user who is using the specific source though we can train users.(§Bn1.20)
  • On Dutch Wikipedia (4s) participants talked about fake news (§Nl1.2) (§Nl1.4) and how to overcome them though one user thinks that it is wiser to focus on what we want to achieve than on what we want to counteract. (§Nl1.3)
  • On French Wikipedia (10s) some of the participants said that challenge 3 conflicts with the previous two (§Fr1.62) and two Wikipedia principles, when they are applied, naturally and effectively prevent fake news. (§Fr1.68) The success of Wikipedia is based on the possibility given to anyone to participate in the project and on the democratic principles underneath its organization. (§Fr1.71)
  • On Hindi community's WhatsApp group (2s) it was discussed that we should decide between right and wrong sources (§Hi1.16) and also that events covered by just one newspaper should not be included. (§Hi1.17) During one on one discussions (5s) Hindi community members talked about using multiple sources (§Hi2.22) and blacklisting poor sources. (§Hi2.23) It was also noted that not all the mediums can be controlled and influenced by an entity (§Hi2.24) and we should keep looking for reliable sources. (§Hi2.25)
  • Polish Wikipedia (18s) community talked about various biases (§Pl1.27) and one contributor talked about only using high quality sources (§Pl1.30) while another user said that our content is expected to be up to date which is not possible by using traditional sources (§Pl1.31) and also mentioned the economic limitations in using those sources. (§Pl1.32) It was also pointed out that the WMF is helping the Wikimedians with The Wikipedia Library initiative. (§Pl1.33) (§Pl1.34)
  • On Wikidata discussion (1s) one participant suggested hosting a central repository of tools and techniques for verifying sources or detecting that they have been fabricated.(§D1.6)

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

Key insight edit

Trends indicate that changes are coming for all regions – both those emerging and those saturated with mobile internet.

For the areas just coming online, developing local, mobile content is a strong opportunity.

Globally, products will continue to evolve from “simple” websites with different device experiences (desktop, mobile) to even more sophisticated integrated platforms, incorporating technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality.

  • During one on one discussions (4s) Hindi community members talked about investing more into mobile technology (§Hi2.27) and easily translatable images. (§Hi2.28) They also talked about partnering with platforms like Google Assistant and Siri. (§Hi2.30)
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