Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Iteration 1/Partnerships/Q3&4 R3

Good

idea. A few example partners, please. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 13:32, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi Winged Blades of Godric. So from my perspective this is highly contextual, as what is underrepresented one place isn't elsewhere. But broadly speaking, a partnership with a museum of anthropology (say, The Horniman) could help fill various gaps on a range of indigenous subjects in a range of languages, a partnership with a archaeological society (Egypt Exploration Society) in Europe could enrich content about North African history, or working with say, a historically African American university like Howard might improve content on black academics. Note, this is a fairly broad recommendation that doesn't change a great deal for some parts of the movement that will already be doing this sort of thing, but might represent change for others and/or a validation of their desire to work in this particular direction. Battleofalma (talk) 13:51, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Nice. These collaborations are almost always helpful. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 19:40, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Vague

This is too vague. What concrete changes are being proposed? EddieHugh (talk) 16:43, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Start

Start by identifying and quantifying the gaps. Then it may become clearer what is reasonably practicable to do about them. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:27, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

True, this is a fairly high level recommendation that takes it as read that there are gaps which will vary across projects/languages. I agree that the follow-on will be identifying and quantifying said gaps, but from a partnerships perspective and remit, acknowledging that we should work with partners that help address this is a broadly good approach. Battleofalma (talk) 13:57, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

It is a bit of a chicken and egg thing. Before you choose a partner you need to know they can help with a gap, so you need to know what gaps exist so you can select appropriate partners to plumb the depths of the gap and help fill them in, unless there are specialist gap detectors and surveyors out there. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:07, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

That makes sense but I would say that it's often not the partner per se, but what is focused on in a partnership, so the choice is often about project focus and not always partner choice. e.g I can go to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and focus on extracting content to expand the existing articles we have on en:wp about say, Royal Navy ships, or I can focus on surfacing content about notable black sailors or information they have about Madagascan shipping routes etc. Same partner, different content outcomes.

Just to clarify that the resources and remit of the working group allow for discussions that are more about direction of partnerships and less about content itself, so we are making assumptions (but also taking from our own combined experience) that there are areas of content that need improving, and that work has been, or can be done to determine what these are. Battleofalma (talk) 11:13, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

It is good to fill any gaps, but some gaps will be filled by regular editors without intervention from a focused group, Others will be filled by special interest groups. The gaps least likely to be filled without intervention could be researched and specified, this may get groups or editors to focus on them specifically, and this is where research could most usefully be focused. Grant money could be used for researching these gaps, and this should fall within the generally accepted range of movement scope. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:34, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

One easy solution would be to find ways to encourage the non-English language projects to use sources in their own languages over translating articles from the English. There are many cases where German, French, Russian & other scholars are far more accomplished than those in English: German Egyptology is a fair match for its English counterpart, there are far more resources for Ethiopian history in Italian than in English, & the latest work for the history of the Empire of Trebizond is in Greek & Russian. Yet when I turn to those language Wikipedias for information likely not in the English one, I often find them to be little more than translations of an older version of the English articles! (It was ironic that in updating articles on the individual Emperors of Trebizond I was using articles published in French within the last 20 years, while the equivalent French articles were based on a book in English published in 1926!) No one language has a monopoly on knowledge, something all of us forget far too often. -- Llywrch (talk) 23:06, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

That could be helpful. I have had similar experience finding very little useful material with non-English references for translating to English, but my field is probably much better represented in English in the literature, so did not think much of it. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:07, 29 August 2019 (UTC)