Wikidata talk:Strategy 2017/Cycle 2/The Most Respected Source of Knowledge

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

ArthurPSmith

I *like* this theme, but I also think it's a little unrealistic. There will always be specialized knowledge sources (research institutes, government agencies, scientific bodies) that have ultimate authority in their domains. But I think wikimedia entities can become in some sense the most respected source of broad-based knowledge - information of interest to and suited for the general public - for the world. Within each language wikipedia, the push and pull between different perspectives has been a good force in reconciling opposing views and coming to a broad-based consensus on things. This will be even more true with an increased central role for wikidata, as it brings people from all language backgrounds together to work out consensus in a centralized knowledge repository. The value this brings to the world will, I believe, be profound and incalculable. It is something we should strive for, something that will revolutionize access to knowledge and accelerate the progress of knowledge throughout the world. So I think striving for this goal, at least in the broad sense, could make a huge impact on the world. ArthurPSmith (talk) 16:17, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

ChristianKl

I don't think the goal should be to have the most respect. I don't want that a reader with a medical problems respects Wikipedia more as a source of knowledge than he respects his doctor.

It's fine when other sources have more respect in particular domains. Rising respect for Wikimedia increases problems of citogenisis and it's likely that the knowledge ecosystem is healthier when it has multiple respectable players. Plurality is good.

Our goal should be to host high quality knowledge instead of focusing on relative respect in comparison to other sources. ChristianKl (talk) 10:52, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Charles Matthews

"Fact-checking is a hypertext issue." This is obvious enough, to Wikipedians who rate sources by their own verifiability. It runs contrary to the traditional print-based model of publishing. Wikimedia can make a massive difference in simply promoting the networked model of verification it has to hand, at scale. Fact-checking a single article is a media habit but linked to deadlines, by-lines, and no doubt other lines. While there is no reason that editorial comment should be consistent between sources, inconsistent factual claims do need to be confronted. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:24, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

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

Charles Matthews

For fact-checking, that amounts to asking whether the current furore over "fake news" is a moral panic, or a symptom of some sort of socio-political seismic shift. If the latter, it should be treated as the most important. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:28, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Lymantria

Being a respected and reliable source of knowledge should be the most important theme. Without this one, the other four are of no use. Lymantria (talk) 16:39, 3 June 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?

Charles Matthews

Consistent with the above, I think the "per article" view of Wikipedia content should be simplified. Very long articles, if traditionally encyclopedic, are not as useful as concise "good articles" that are tightly referenced to good sources. The direction of "short academic book chapters" should be deprecated, in favour of material easier to translate. More zoom in, less zoom out. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:35, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

I totally agree with this. We need to lower the threshold of participation as well, and by exploding long Wikipedia articles into bitesize "chunks", updating information with micro-edits and adding references will become much easier for newbies. So it helps with production of content, not just consumption of content. The main challenge for this idea is readability. Readability will be dramatically affected if the whole article can no longer be read as a coherent series of "sentences" but must be read as a list of interconnected "chunks". Jane023 (talk) 04:58, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

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

Charles Matthews

The whole WikiCite direction, particularly the separation of citation data from its presentation, and attaching references explicitly to text areas. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:37, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

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

Charles Matthews

Reference librarians, archivists, fact-aggregating scholars, metadata mavens. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:39, 14 May 2017 (UTC)