Thursday, October 23, 2014

#Wikipedia - One size does not fit all


In Wikipedia we are used to see our readers as one big group. They all read the same article, they all get the same info-boxes and they all get the same categories. It is a reasonable approach when Wikipedia is only a pile of text without data to separate out potential differences in interest.

One obvious consequence is that reasonable expectations decide what is shown and what it looks like. When there are too many categories, they no longer get attention. So what categories should be shown? The problem is that this "one size fits all" approach shows too much for some and too little for others.

Thanks to Wikidata it is possible to allow for preferences. For many categories Wikidata knows what they are about; they show for instance humans and their alma mater, their sports club, their gender... When our public has the option to choose what category of category they are interested in, there is no longer a "need" to choose what categories to keep. It is just a matter of making the choice what categories to show by default.

Any and all other category of categories are then selectable by the reader.
Thanks,
      GerardM

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