strategy.wikimedia.org
i accidentally stumbled onto strategy.wikimedia.org
recently, and decided to have a go at writing a couple of
proposals. one is the distributed wikipedia proposal, in
which, it should come as no surprise that it's the exact
same idea as recommended in the arse-kicking
article.
actually, the other proposal was originally part of the same
one, but it became clear that i was basically talking about
the wikipedia "API" which is primarily used by "bots". so,
i morphed it into a proposal "extend wikipedia API to cover
everything that the current HTTP interface can do, please"
proposal.
where it all goes horribly wrong
then, i accidentally encountered some proposals that start
talking about putting binary blobs into wikipedia pages
(wtf??) and my alarm bells went off the scale. there are
three that i've found so far, and they're proposing that
wikipedia allow java and flash.
i cannot begin to describe how much of an insanely bad idea
these are. from every possible angle imaginable, the risks
and costs massively outweigh the marginable benefits,
and whereever there is a marginable benefit, there are
alternative ideas which do the job in a safer way.
at the core of these proposals is that it is more beneficial
to be able to write animations into wikipedia pages, to
enhance and augment the text and the information being
presented.
where the proposals go wrong is that they then advocate that
the use of a full-blown programming language, along with
browser plugins necessary to run the resultant binary blobs,
is a good idea.
the sheer cost to end-users to learn these programming
languages, along with the necessary english language skills
and the mindset required to be capable of doing programming,
is utterly prohibitive. end-users have enough difficulty
with the concept of "wiki markup", let alone a full-blown
programming language.
advocates of these proposals are finally admitting "that's
okay - end-users aren't expected to contribute to these
pages (written in java or flash) anyway, so we don't have to
care about them".
this is in direct contravention of the goals of
wikipedia, and is completely against the whole purpose of
the wikimedia strategy process.
exactly why the advocates of these proposals still cannot
get this, even though i've been pointing it out to them in a
dozen different ways, i really don't understand.
but - i am persisting with explaining it to them because the
risk is that their proposals are accepted. i cannot find
the words to describe how much of an incredibly bad idea
that would be.
