SignWriting 2025 - A response to a Wiktionary initiative.

On Diff, the aggregator for Wikimedia news, a case was made to support sign languages particularly for Wiktionary. Sign languages are used to communicate, there are many hundreds of sign languages, only half the people who know how to sign are deaf. There is one writing system, SignWriting that can be used for all sign languages.

There are a few misconceptions in the Wiktionary proposal; with over 300 sign languages, there is a potential for over 300 translations for each concept. Sign languages are not to be linked to countries; there are countries with multiple indigenous sign languages. All languages have their own ISO-639 language code the same, ase for instance is the code for American Sign Language. 

The characters of the SignWriting script are included in the same standard that includes all other scripts like Cyrillic or Devangari. The consequence is that as your computer supports UNICODE, your computer will be able to show texts written in SignWriting when you have a supporting font. At that Google may be your friend with its Noto Sans font and the Wikimedia Foundation may provision readers of its projects content.

A decade ago, there was a concerted effort from within the SignWriting movement to have Wikipedias in multiple sign languages. Much of what transpired can still be read on my blog. At the time the Wikimedia Foundation did not have the bandwidth to support the technical requirements in MediaWiki. It is why the deaf who express themselves with their sign language have no platform within the Wikimedia Foundation.

Thanks,

        GerardM

Growing exposure for Wikimedia content

The downward trend in the number of readers and editors of Wikipedia is a big issue but maintenance is imho as problematic. Too many articles are out of date, need an update or are factually problematic. There is not one but there are 250+ Wikipedias intended to serve the sum of all available knowledge and they all need more readers and editors to amend and append.

When we go back to first principles, references are the basis for every article and item. We could serve all known references and add reference material for people to find. They could be youtubes, scholarly papers, articles from newspapers and all that in any language. New references are linked to subjects and this makes it easier to contribute to Wikipedia articles. 

Obviously Wikipedia articles, Commons pictures, all are to be included in the search results. There is also an opportunity for Abstract-Wikipedia; even a one liner in every language is an important result particularly when it expands as more information becomes available in Wikidata.

The objective is more eyeballs for what we have on offer. "WikiFind" will expose content from partners like Internet Archive. It may expose content from YouTube, newspapers whatever.. When new content is to be exposed, it is to be linked to a topic as known in Wikidata. 

The objective is to increase our public and I may rain on the parade of many improvements considered for Wikipedia but will they improve quality or will they improve exposure. Improvements are nice to have, exposure is a must have.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Retracted and outdated sources from a Wikimedia perspective

A recent article related to the quality of Wikipedia references indicates that when a paper is retracted, the median time for a correction is 3.68 years. There is a bot for that, the RetractionBot, updated in 2024, the problem is that people have to use it AND "expecting Wikipedia editors to continuously monitor every citation for new retractions is unrealistic"...

HOWEVER

Retracted papers are hardly our only problem. Information is often superseded in later publications. This does not mean that earlier works are retracted it means that the information our articles are based on is stale. There is no bot for that AND expecting Wikipedia editors to continuously monitoring for new information is unrealistic...

ALSO

As our existing content needs maintenance, our public is diminishing and all our communities of volunteer contributors have their own objectives we have a problem; what to do?

Why not flip the script, why not provide a search engine that includes all our references, our articles and items. We enrich it with information from Retraction Watch, Crossref, ORCiD and obviously the Internet Archive. As the new "WikiFind" community adds new information items, it links them to articles and items and builds a field with potential new references. 

The objective of the "WikiFind" search engine is to be informative and provide a structure that brings our projects together AND present all of this to a new public. The implementation should be similar to how we started Commons; at the time Erik Möller started a new Wiki and only later did it serve images to Wikipedia articles... Maybe a challenge this time.

Thanks,

      GerardM

Ziyad Al-Aly, clinical epidemiologist from a Wikimedia perspective

 Ars Technica featured an article "Heart protection from COVID shots remains amid updates, study finds".  The article refers to multiple studies and mentions Ziyad Al-Aly, one of the authors of several of the studies. 

When you consider Dr Al-Aly as a Wikimedia consumer, then his Scholia produces the most entries into the Wikimedia rabbit hole like publications, co-authors and topics. Drilling down, a

Wikipedia article informs about his education and awards.

As a Wikimedia contributor, there is so much that can be done: attributing articles, adding missing articles thanks to the ORCiD-scraper, adding co-authors to papers.. And then there is the deep dive, adding for instance the awards known to the Wikipedia for instance.

Now for the Wikimedia perspective; it is losing its audience. Without an audience what motivates people to contribute? Without contributors, who maintains our content? Its main perspective for the future should be: how will we reach a public for the sum of all the knowledge we have on offer.

The essence of all that knowledge is in known references. The Ars Technica article could obviously serve as a reference for Wikimedia content. When the Wikimedia Foundation were to offer references and sources in a search engine, traditional Wikimedia content is available for a deep dive. When these sources are associated with topics that have a Wikipedia article, it also serves as a tool to update these articles.

A WMF search engine based on sources and references is not commercial, would provide a distinct service and will entice renewed interest in its projects.

Thanks,

       GerardM

What is the utility of Wikimedia projects as seen by its editors

I participated in a survey for Wikimedia contributors. The survey was first and foremost about traditional Wikipedia and honestly, there is not much value in my replies.

Over the years I have contributed a lot to many projects. My efforts have to have a purpose otherwise I lose my motivation. It has to have utility, it is what I dream about, it is what I strive for.

Would it not be great when we knew what our community dreams about, what they aim to achieve and as importantly how these dreams might grow into a reality or have grown into realities. Would it not be great when the Wikimedia Foundation builds on what is already there and grows our public, our relevance? It could start with a survey.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Reliable sources for Wikimedia in the time of Minnesota in Winter

There are government engineered riots in the streets of Minnesota, people are dying. The sources for what transpires; the traditional sources of repute are suspect. Government sources deliberately polish what transpires to the extend that its lies are obvious given video documentation showing proof of the opposite. News cooperations operate on the basis of "balanced reporting" consequently obvious falsehoods get equal attention invalidating reliability for these traditional sources.

The best that can be said about USA government publications is that it publishes its policy however it no longer provides us with a reliable source. It no longer has the organisations that had a quality making their publications qualify as reliable. Examples abound; think health, climate, traffic, trade, military.

Wikimedia serves a global public. Arguably foreign sources became more reliable and respectable, more likely to provide a narrative that clashes with what some in the USA expect to hear. 

The Wikimedia Foundation is an organisation based in the United States, its infrastructure is centred in the USA. I fear for for the continuity of its products and its quality. It is not a given that this will remain given a US government going to court with the BBC because of what it considers partisan reporting. Wikimedia aims to provide a neutral point of view but given that its traditional sources are increasingly suspect, that it operates in an environment that is no longer free. Given that its bias is also in what it does not cover, I wonder how we measure Wikipedia as a reliable source.

Thanks,

       GerardM

My three anwers for the questions of Bernadette Meehan

Mrs Meehan will be the next Chief Executive Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. In her personal presentation she indicates what her questions will be to learn about our organisation:

* What brought you to this movement?

* How do we stay relevant over the next 25 years?

* What three Wiki resources should I read first?

* I read about Wikipedia on the website of Byte magazine. It sounded interesting and it was.

** This is where I have opinions

*** This is where I know that others will make better recommendations

I am certain that we will retain relevance. How that relevance will evolve has dimensions.

• we remain independent and thanks to our contributor communities our trust model remains in tact
• our relevance for AI training is likely to decrease because of our current inability to harness the knowledge we have and ensure validity
• when we improve the validity and consistency of our data, we will be better able to retain our English language public the main difference will be in the growth of the public for other languages

The most relevant factor will be the transformation of our community and its practices. Will it evolve so that one community will know what to trust from other communities. Will communities find ways to facilitate other communities. Will we trust other organisations and trust their qualities in order to partner and provide the best information possible?

Many Wikimedians have strong opinions declaring their objections as insurmountably. The problem is that even when they have a point they do not consider the value of what they reject. Typically what is rejected is the overall effect on completeness and fidelity for our public. One easy win is when all references with a DOI are all known at Wikidata. It provides a basis necessary for a check for retractions and for later publications citing our reference. Quality information evolves and we can and should have a tool that enables such considerations.

PS Is America still the best place for our movement given its shortcomings as a functional judicial system?

Thanks,

      GerardM

Providing Resources for a subject used in a Wikimedia project

So you want to write an article in a Wikimedia Project. It may be new to your project but it is likely part of the sum of all Wikimedia knowledge. Lets consider a workflow that acknowledges this reality.

An article typically starts with a title and it may be linked to an existing item in Wikidata. If so, the item, the concept is linked to a workflow. All the references for all articles are gathered. All relations known at Wikidata are presented. Based on what kind of item it is, tools are identified presenting information in the concept articles. They are categories and info boxes. References for content in the info boxes are included as well.

Another workflow is for existing articles. All references and relations expressed in the article show as green, unused references and relations show as orange. Missing categories and values in info boxes are presented and the author may click to include them in the article. Values in info boxes may show black, red or blue it will be whatever the author chooses.

The workflow is enabled once the concept or the article is linked to Wikidata. So for those Wikipedians who do not want to change, they just do not make use of this workflow and are left unbothered. There will be harvesting processes based on the recent changes on all projects; a change will trigger processes that may look for vandalism for new relations and for suggestions for new labels. 

The most important beneficiary will be our audience. This workflow makes the sum of all our knowledge actionable to improve articles, populate articles and reflect what we know in all our articles. Our editors have the choice to use this tool or not. Obviously their edits will be harvested and evaluated in a more broad context; all of the Wikimedia projects. The smaller projects where more new articles are created will have an easy time adding info boxes and references. The bigger projects will find the relations that are not or not sufficiently expressed with references. 

Providing subject resources will work only when it is supported on a Foundation scale. It is not that volunteers cannot build a prototype, it is the need for scalability and sustained performance that is not provided by the Toolforge.

Thanks,

      GerardM

Diversity for WMF is in its fundraising and in its results

Diversity is a stated objective and the Wikimedia Foundation does a comparatively good job.. except that it could be so much better.

It is known that (read Gapminder) genuinely rich people live in every country. The Wikimedia Foundation as a rule does not target the truly rich and consequently the average donation is low. It makes us independent of the vagaries of the opinions of the really rich. As Wikimedia becomes a truly global organisation, it should raise funds everywhere and report what WMF does locally. 

As we report on what we do locally, it follows that we have an interest for any locality. As local children do use Commons we ask people to upload pictures of a local policeman, firefighter, nurse, police car ambulance etc for them to use. As students read in their own language we easily offer e-books using the hub best suited for the purpose. When as a response we are asked to provide services, we prioritise the local service and we will internationalise and localise to get the most out of our investments.

As we become more global and diverse, the percentage of what the provision of our services will represent more and more the global distribution of people. It will grow our community, it will grow our audience and we will evolve away from an organisation managed from "the center of the world".

Plenty of challenges ahead but not so much the amount of money the highest earners in the WMF get paid. At that I do not give a fuck as long as the job gets done and, so should you.

Thanks,

        GerardM

The pain that is in maintaining lists of African governmental politicians

At the French Wikipedia, there is a category with 16 Finance ministers of Morocco. A category is an unsorted list and the French category contains a few more entries than the English category. Both Wikipedias do not have a (sorted) list.

I maintain list of African heads of state and African governmental ministers, so this is just a next list to prepare. The workflow is as follows: I create an item for a position, on the talk page I add a template that contains the data and pointers to what is missing. Typically such information can be found on a Wikipedia list, this time I have to rely on templates on Wikipedia articles.. All my lists are "works in progress" and are on my watch list.

I have added copies of the Listeria lists to many Wikipedias. The texts are in English, the data is shown in the local language. It being in English is a reason to refuse these lists in several communities.

The Listeria functionality is replaced by Wikimedia Foundation maintained software. All the list definitions and expressions exist in one place. The data is shown in a language that can be selected. When a list changes, it is reflected on watch lists. You can watch for all data and possibly for data and labels in "your" language. A project can opt in to enable the use of these lists when they don't, functionality is available to compare a list with the centrally maintained list.

Thanks, GerardM 

The pain that is in maintaining the same list 300 times

As you may know, the board of the Wikimedia Foundation recently changed its composition. The President of the board resigned. This was easily reflected in English. Tonight there is a meeting of candidate board members for the Middle East and North Africa.

Obviously the information in Arabic needs to be correct and at this time it is not. There are many more languages supported by Wikimedia in the Middle East and North Africa and all of them could have information about the board and what it stands for. This inspired me to come up with the following user story..

An administrative person of the Wikimedia Foundation is tasked with maintaining  specific lists relevant to the movement. The data is maintained at Wikidata and lists that exist potentially in all Wikimedia languages, some 300, are updated with software maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. Each WMF list is on a watch list; when changes occur in the list, quality is centrally maintained.

Thanks, GerardM 

Two "user stories" for Nigeria

I spoke with my Nigerian friend Olatunde Olalekan Isaac on Facebook about growing more interest for Wikimedia content in Nigeria. I will not bore you with a verbatim discussion we had. Bringing you two user stories is much more satisfying.

Nigerian kids looking for pictures of a fireman goto their Wikipedia and search for an "onye oku oku". The search engine knows from where the request comes and shows the pictures of Nigerian firemen first.

The pictures are from Commons, in the meta data of the picture it says where the photo was taken. Happy kids, happy teachers and happy Nigerian Wikimedians because this brings more attention for the projects they care for.

At first it is an experiment that brings more traffic in their language. They then launch a photo contest in Nigeria.

People find pictures in Nigerian languages and to increase the choice of pictures to choose from, a photo contest is launched of everyday Nigerian objects, traffic signs, shops of all kinds, professionals, "be bold and show us your Nigeria" is the mantra. People find more pictures about Nigeria and even after the contest people continue to increase the selection people use for an illustration.

The Wikimedia Foundation has another challenge, there are copycats all over the world and the public use of Commons increases by 200% in a few months time.

Thanks,  GerardM 

Calling a spade a spade and the "friendly space policy"

In my previous blog post I established that facts supported by science trump personal opinions, even community consensus. It follows that pointing out a biased opinion can be hugely unpopular and considered offensive. The "friendly space policy" is applied on the spot and at best can be later appealed at the "trust and safety". This is after the fact, it takes a huge time effort and it is why I did not bother. One other reason is that I told the respected Wikipedian that what he said was biased and I did not make excuses for saying so after prodding by a trusted officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. I am sanctioned and can no longer use certain functions.

I run for a seat on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation and even though it is a popularity contest, I am not in it to be Mr Wonderful; I will not kiss babies. My platform is to improve our service particularly to the projects other than English Wikipedia. To be successful, I have established that this is doable and I have to undermine accepted opinions that prevent us from improving on our service.

I truly respect the Wikipedian who made the biased remarks but I will not apologise for pointing his bias out. 

When I am to establish my aims at board level, there must be acceptance that we do not serve everyone with the sum of all the knowledge we have when there is this persistent bias towards our English speaking public. The recent developments at the Croatian Wikipedia show that "community consensus" can be overridden when this is necessary to establish our accepted global Wikimedia policies. It follows that the board should be mindful of the evolving science about the "gender gap" and insist English Wikipedia to consider its recommendations (aka clean up its act). It follows that even the most respected English Wikipedian and in the light of the "friendly space policy" can be called out for such bias.

As to the organisation of the WMF; its director reports to the board and is to inform about the development for other languages and the effects on the traffic in other languages. 

Thanks, GerardM

@Wikimedia and its defined #predisposition towards its editors

The predisposition of the Wikimedia Foundation can be found in its mission statement: "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally". Contrast this with a previous version where: "every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge". The Wikimedia Foundation defines the movement with "Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world". 

It is easy to understand how the Wikimedia Foundation priorities on its communities when developing its programs. The assumption has always been that once the data is available, a public will come. In the second part of its mission statement enabling this dissemination it is defined that the Wikimedia has a defined role for it to play in the global and effective dissemination of the educational content it holds.

When you monitor the effectiveness like I have, then you do not care for promises for the future, you want the data to show how a difference is made. An easy one is to compare content delivery in English against all other languages; English content is slightly less than 50% of traffic, this has been the same for many years. When a Commons project that worked for all languages no longer worked because of a failed text integration, it was seen as "we did not test for that". More importantly, the text integration was not removed. This shows that the second part of the WMF mission statement is not seen as critical.

I am a candidate for the board.  In many ways I am the wrong guy for the job. The wrong guy because I have a platform and I do question the lack of growth in the delivery of the content that we have. For me this is a classic situation where lack of data equals no problem. It is not a bias measured in percentage of Wikipedia articles for one group versus another group, the bias I demand attention for is the percentage of data delivered in a languages relative to the size of the population who relies on this language.

The wrong guy because this is not a popular issue. People are offended when you point out that their point of view implies a bias. People fear they lose out because their hobby horse is a niche project comparatively and not part of the mission statement. The right guy because you can check out my past in my blog that I kept for over 15 years, you will find that I have been practical and on mission for dissemination of our content. 

For me it does not matter if I win or lose; the mission itself is critical and I want the Wikimedia board and the Wikimedia director realise that the second part of the Foundation's mission statement is where it could have done so much better.

Thanks,

      GerardM

What to do on the Wikimedia board; imho first things first

It is a stated objective of the Wikimedia Foundation to have "knowledge equity". When you care to know the practicalities, just search Wikimedia in one of the 200 languages with the least Wikipedia content and compare it with a search in English. English provides you with vastly more of everything.

Nowadays, "knowledge equity" is accepted and strategic at the Wikimedia Foundation. This acceptance is a recent development; gone are the days when a most senior WMF executive stated that one Wikipedia, at most five, should be enough. 

Given that we now support some 300 languages, it is the translatewiki.net community has always been the cornerstone to the knowledge equity we provide in our projects. Without its high quality internationalisation and localisation efforts the knowledge equity we provide would not have been possible. It follows that any and all knowledge equity for a culture, a language has as its precondition that the tooling, the environment has been properly localised.

It becomes really strategic when the tooling is provided by outside parties. A key role in ensuring that our references remain available is performed by the Internet Archive. For me it has been on my wish list for a long time that the software of its WayBack Machine, Open Library and FatCat are localised at translatewiki.net. Any and all of our language communities that find the resources will benefit our projects and strengthen us in the shared aim of "sharing in the sum of all knowledge". 

When we are to achieve "knowledge equity", the first thing we should provide is a level playing field. With all tools critical for the maintenance of our projects properly internationalised and available for localisation as a movement we achieve the most basic objective; we enable all our communities to be their best.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Board member of the @Wikimedia Foundation .. for me it is about customer value

Recently many changes happened at the Wikimedia Foundation; its director and its chair of the board ended an illustrious term of office. New elections have been called for board members of the Wikimedia Foundation. This makes it the best of times to ask attention for the customer value our projects provide. 

We want more people to make use of our services and we want to provide more and improved services to them. 

The Wikimedia services are optimised for the English language. More than 50% of our traffic is for the other languages and this makes it easier to improve our service for the 299+ other languages. This has never been a priority there and this makes for many easy pickings.

Commons for instance provides 100% false positives when you look for "bever" with the environment set to Dutch. Old functionality worked really well and it should be easy enough to revert to the full functional version. Research will show if as a result people change their language more pictures are linked to Wikidata and Wikidata gains more labels as a result. When people do search with a string that provides no result, we can search Wiktionary and ask show suggestions for what we find. Oh and when people are from Singapore, why not be biased and show pictures from Singapore first?

One of the challenges for any Wikipedia is the maintenance of lists. Particularly for the smaller projects it is too much of a drain. I have dabbled with for instance lists of African politicians. Arguably information on the current national functionaries for any country should be available and up to date as much as American or European politicians. When a Wikipedia wants to have an up to date list, it should be possible to subscribe to a list. The functionality is to be supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. When for whatever a community does not want such functionality, they can still be pinged when there is some work for them to do.

Wikisourcerers transcribed original works in many languages. As a project Wikisource is great for the sourcerers but for readers ... For some languages websites were created where the finished works have a friendly interface for READERS.. Bringing all the work to a public, is what brings value to all the work the sourcerers put in..

We may not be a commercial organisation but the service we provide is relevant and valuable to our "customers". When you read my blog that has been running for sixteen years, you find that I have been consistent in bringing attention to what we could do to improve our service. Given that we could do so much more, I put myself forward as a candidate for board member of the Wikimedia Foundation. The least I hope to achieve is attention for the results of what we do.

Thanks, GerardM

The @Wikimedia's #endowment aim is to reduce risk.

When you assess risk, when the purpose of the Wikimedia's endowment is to ensure the future operation of Wikipedia and probably other projects like Commons as well, money is not the only risk to consider.

The current government of the USA operates in a way that poses no or little thread to the continued operation of the WMF. However, the USA is a two party system and the same can not be said when the Republican Party is to return to power. 

All the servers that run the Wikimedia projects are currently in the United States. With servers able to run the full stack of Wikimedia projects elsewhere, two objectives are served. 

• up to date data becomes closer to the readers close to the new servers
• the risk of an USA that turns on the Wikimedia Foundation is mitigated

The WMF does not need to use the endowment to make this happen. Given its current finances, it should be an operational decision.

Thanks,

        GerardM

What to do to counter an institutional bias of the Wikimedia Foundation (part 1)

The bias for Wikipedia as a project is strong, the bias for English makes it worse. When our aim is to share the sum of all knowledge, we have to acknowledge this and consider the consequences and allow for potential remedies.

"Bias" is a loaded word. When you read the Wikipedia article it is only negative. Dictionaries give more room an example: "our strong bias in favor of the idea". The Wikimedia Foundation is considering rebranding and it explicitly states that it seeks a closer relation with its premier brand Wikipedia. 

This is a published bias. It follows that other projects do not receive the same attention, do not get the same priority. For me it is obvious that as a consequence the WMF could do better when it intends to "share in the sum of all available knowledge" let alone the knowledge that is available to it.

Arguably another more insidious bias is the bias for English, particularly the bias for the English Wikipedia. Given that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, we have a world wide public and the use for our information hardly grows. Research is done on English Wikipedia so in effect we arguably do not even know what we are talking about.

When we are to do better, it means that we be need to be free to discuss our biases, present arguments and even use the arguments or publications of others to make a point. The COO of the WMF states in the context of diversity in tech and media that "when the bonus of executives relies on diversity, diversity will happen". It is reasonable to use this same argument. When the bonuses for executives of the WMF rely on the growth in all our projects, it stands to reason that they will make the necessary room for growth. When one of the best Wikipedians says "There are only a limited number of projects that the WMF can take on at any time, and this wouldn't have been my priority", this demonstrates a bias against the other projects. Arguably the WMF has never really, really, really supported other projects, it does not market them, it does not support them, they exist because the MediaWiki software allows for the functionality. 

When we are to counter the institutional bias of the WMF, we have to be able to make the case, present arguments and ask for the WMF to accept the premise and consider suggestions for change. This proves to be an issue and makes our biases even more intractable.

Thanks,

       GerardM

@Wikimedia and languages - @WikiCommons search, the most relevant development since @Wikidata

The Wikimedia Foundation is important for the support of languages on the Internet. The localisation of its software is done at translatewiki.net, it is done in over 300 languages.

The milestones for multilingual support are:

• the first Wikipedia in another language
• Localisation of the MediaWiki software
• Transfer of internationalisation and localistion of MediaWiki to translatewiki.net
• MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle available for external users of MediaWiki
• Support for interwiki links to Wikidata
• Special:MediaSearch, multi-lingual search for Wikimedia Commons

These milestones have been very much technology driven. For me the one reason why Wikidata became the success it is, is because it was from the start linked to every subject covered by Wikipedia and the solution was so overwhelmingly superior that nobody could reasonably object.

To make a success of this latest milestone, institutional support is needed. It is for the Wikimedia Foundation, its movement to reduce its bias for English and make room for improved language support.

My way of phrasing this as an essential objective: "All of

@WikiCommons

is available to every single person on the planet". As we adopt this as our objective, it is first and foremost about making Special:MediaSearch useful in any and all of our languages and make it available from any and all of our Wikipedias.

As we adopt this, it is essential that priority is given to multilingual search over special interests including GLAM, Open Data, SPARQL and what have you. Priority when we are to open up in multiple languages first. Special interest only gain relevance when it is made obvious how it helps it helps open up Commons in Swahili, Hindi, German or Vietnamese.

Special:MediaSearch is possible because of everything that went before.. Its functionality is part of MediaWiki and localised at translatewiki.net. The existing search engine is now linked to the labels for items in Wikidata and it was made public after Hay Kranen brought us his proof of concept. It became available warts and all and while finding منصور اعجاز  in Punjabi is huge, it is not great when you do not find cats because a user is called Kočka..

The challenge to us as an organisation, a movement are we willing to work on our existing bias, open up Commons in all the languages we are said to support and accept that our hobby horses will get attention not in the next but in a future iteration.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Dear @krmaher @Wikipedia is not the #flagship to win our war

The virtues of Wikipedia have been expressed in millions of words, on many conferences and in many interviews by you, Jimmy and countless others. Nothing wrong with that. Wikipedia has been extremely useful, it has a dedicated following and it is going exactly nowhere new. What it is expected to bring is more of the same old old.

Wikipedia pundits use their own idiom, have their own values and easily dismiss what does not comply with their notions. Notions not based in actual facts but in opinions.

Our aim was to share in the sum of all knowledge, what we have is a domineering English Wikipedia expecting everything to be shaped in its image. The result is many malfunctioning sister projects that do not get attention "because what is good for the goose is good for the gander". It is not. I can find a picture of the Vasa, a former flagship but not in Commons (it uses the same technology as Wikipedia). There are many books in Wikisource but we do not know what is completed and we do not market these books to a public. When Wikidata was created its first achievement was taking inter wiki links away from Wikipedia providing a functional platform and removing millions of edits from all Wikipedias. So far functionality that does improve on what Wikipedia has is dismissed while facts show how Wikipedia under performs.

The question is if Wikimedia as an organisation is beholden to Wikipedia. If its aspirations are more than only that, it has an obligation to the other projects. It is to find a public for what the finished content of Wikisource. It has to find a public for the biggest open content resource of images making it actually easy and obvious to find pictures of for instance the Vasa. Finally there is Wikidata that is crippled by its own success and hampered from what seems to me to be a lack of organisational attention.

Dear Katherine, I am happy when a technician expresses his plans to mitigate a disaster. He does this within the restrictions he is under. It is however for you, in your capacity as director of the Wikimedia Foundation to express what relevance is given to Wikidata. We have a war chest, we are challenged to take up a new role in the war for factual and balanced information. With only English Wikipedia we have already lost the rest of the world and with English Wikipedia we also have a very biased world view. Never mind, nothing new here.

My question to you, are you aware that Wikidata has no room for growth? Is that acceptable to the Foundation? How are we going to share the sum of the knowledge that is available to us when our flagship is about to sink while sailing out of the harbor?
Thanks,
      GerardM