Proposal to close the Simple English Wikipedia

mynameisnotdave · Unread post by **mynameisnotdave** » Tue Jun 19, 2018 7:20 pm

There has been a proposal to close the Simple English Wikipedia.

At the moment, most people are voting no, even if the original proposer does make some salient points.

I put in a weak oppose.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Tue Jun 19, 2018 7:40 pm

If I could I would support that. Simple Wikipedia, for whatever good it might do in theory, is little more than a drain on the already stretched thin resources of Wikipedia. Nothing would be lost by dropping it except maybe the ability of some to say they are admins there.

Plus at the end of the day, every 'pedia that is deleted is a win for the hasten the day crowd.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Tue Jun 19, 2018 7:45 pm

The main use of Simple Wikipedia is as a haven for people expelled from the mother ship.

AndyTheGrump · Unread post by **AndyTheGrump** » Tue Jun 19, 2018 8:06 pm

Poetlister wrote:The main use of Simple Wikipedia is as a haven for people expelled from the mother ship.

Certainly looks that way. Selecting 'simple' articles at random suggests to me that the language isn't much 'simpler' anyway. Or if it is, it is only because the 'simple' encyclopaedia fails to adequately explain things properly. A questionable concept, executed badly. Wouldn't recommend it to anyone trying to learn English.

I expect it will be kept though

MadManz · Unread post by **MadManz** » Tue Jun 19, 2018 8:08 pm

Something I don't get about Simple English Wikipedia: the edit bar has change instead of edit, yet change is 6 letters long and edit is 4 letters long. Wouldn't it be more simple to just keep "edit", or would that make it too similar?

AndyTheGrump · Unread post by **AndyTheGrump** » Tue Jun 19, 2018 9:00 pm

MadManz wrote:Something I don't get about Simple English Wikipedia: the edit bar has change instead of edit, yet change is 6 letters long and edit is 4 letters long. Wouldn't it be more simple to just keep "edit", or would that make it too similar?

The idea is to use commonly-used words, not necessarily short ones.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip ... le_English

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Tue Jun 19, 2018 10:52 pm

Edit is not a simple English word. Personally I really like the Simple English Wikipedia, writing in a simple language is good, especially as a translation medium. Learning it also counteracted my tenancy to speak jargon. That said, it's not a very popular language, being completely invented and such. I doubt it will get deleted, but what's it matter, I can host a fork if it does.

I highly recommend looking at https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Txikipedia:Azala, the "Txikipedia" tab for the Basque Wikipedia, this shows a simple / kids version of every article on a dedicated tab.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Wed Jun 20, 2018 8:07 pm

Dysklyver wrote:I highly recommend looking at https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Txikipedia:Azala, the "Txikipedia" tab for the Basque Wikipedia, this shows a simple / kids version of every article on a dedicated tab.

This assumes that you have editors willing to produce a simplified version of every single article, and maintain these simplified versions as the main article alters. I can't see that happening on the English site.

Auggie · Unread post by **Auggie** » Wed Jun 20, 2018 11:08 pm

Destroying ten years of content, thousands of man-hours of work. Sounds about right.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Thu Jun 21, 2018 1:28 am

Auggie wrote:Destroying ten years of content, thousands of man-hours of work. Sounds about right.

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Sun Jul 01, 2018 12:19 pm

This has received limited coverage in the Signpost, with the possibility of a full feature next month.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Sun Jul 01, 2018 2:45 pm

Rofl, I voted to kill it three times, with three different accounts...As of yet, they haven't noticed, or don't care. Having said that it doesn't look like it has enough support to kill it, but there is a lot more support than I thought there would be.

The other thing that's funny is that several people mentioned an RFC to add Simple to the top of the list of languages (of which there were several)...I was one of them and that was back in 2012 I think. Kinda funny how no one mentioned that.

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Sun Jul 01, 2018 4:06 pm

Kumioko wrote: [...] I voted to kill it three times, with three different accounts [...]

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Sun Jul 01, 2018 4:18 pm

Dysklyver wrote:
Kumioko wrote: [...] I voted to kill it three times, with three different accounts [...]

He could be double bluffing, trying to undermine the delete vote so that Simple Wikipedia would be kept.

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Sun Jul 01, 2018 4:50 pm

Poetlister wrote:
Dysklyver wrote:
Kumioko wrote: [...] I voted to kill it three times, with three different accounts [...]

He could be double bluffing, trying to undermine the delete vote so that Simple Wikipedia would be kept.

Dunno, but there's a few things that have been noticed:

(cur | prev) 15:13, 20 June 2018‎ TonyBallioni (talk | contribs)‎ . . (63,142 bytes) (-294)‎ . . (→‎Survey: rmv LTA vote) (undo | thank)

(cur | prev) 05:20, 20 June 2018‎ Ajraddatz (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (57,263 bytes) (-665)‎ . . (Reverted changes by 79.106.29.237 (talk) to last version by AfroThundr3007730) (undo | thank) (Tag: Rollback)

(cur | prev) 21:26, 24 June 2018‎ Matiia (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (137,738 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Matiia moved page Proposals for closimg projects/Closure of Simple Emglish Wikipedia (3) to Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Simple English Wikipedia (3) over a redirect without leaving a redirect: revert) (undo | thank)

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Sun Jul 01, 2018 6:13 pm

Poetlister wrote:
Dysklyver wrote:
Kumioko wrote: [...] I voted to kill it three times, with three different accounts [...]

He could be double bluffing, trying to undermine the delete vote so that Simple Wikipedia would be kept.

It's a good idea, but I have no reason to really, it's not like the WMF is going to lift my ban and let me edit there. I edited simple a little but never really got much interest in it. I would rather spend my time on projects people actually use like EnWP or Commons.

I don't really think there is a huge need to delete simple personally, it's not really hurting anything and most likely the folks who edit there won't suddenly engage in other projects if it goes away.

So its really about me being made into an enemy by some people on Wikipedia, me doing what I can to be the enemy they want me to be and helping to hasten the day to the end of Wikipedia. Eliminating Simple and likely causing the few editors there to stop editing completely, is a benefit to that movement as is the elimination of a bunch of articles and reducing the WMF's footprint on the net.

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Sun Jul 01, 2018 6:39 pm

Kumioko wrote:I don't really think there is a huge need to delete simple personally, it's not really hurting anything and most likely the folks who edit there won't suddenly engage in other projects if it goes away.

Well if it gets closed on Wikimedia, Miraheze will host it, so it's not like it's even going anywhere. Failing that, someone else might host it, like me.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Sun Jul 01, 2018 7:12 pm

Where would you put it? Wikia?

If it does end up moving let me know and I might help out a bit.

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Sun Jul 01, 2018 7:42 pm

Kumioko wrote:Where would you put it? Wikia?

Hell no, Wikia is being stupid with their skins and their ads and is therefore in my bad books. I was thinking of perhaps putting it at https://simple.wiki.org.uk.

Kumioko wrote:If it does end up moving let me know and I might help out a bit.

Will do.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Sun Jul 01, 2018 8:02 pm

Yeah the Wikia skin really is crap. Plus anything on Wikia is profit for Jimbo. I really want to move the Military wiki I have been building out of there but don't really know where to take it.

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Sun Jul 01, 2018 8:53 pm

Kumioko wrote:Yeah the Wikia skin really is crap. Plus anything on Wikia is profit for Jimbo. I really want to move the Military wiki I have been building out of there but don't really know where to take it.

Well I have import running now but it will take some hours weeks to import 200k pages. Userrights are organised by the crat at the moment if you are interested.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Mon Jul 02, 2018 12:53 am

Dysklyver wrote:
Kumioko wrote:Yeah the Wikia skin really is crap. Plus anything on Wikia is profit for Jimbo. I really want to move the Military wiki I have been building out of there but don't really know where to take it.
Well I have import running now but it will take some hours weeks to import 200k pages. Userrights are organised by the crat at the moment if you are interested.

I hope you're doing that with a bot of some kind and not manually.

Auggie · Unread post by **Auggie** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 3:16 pm

Kumioko wrote:Yeah the Wikia skin really is crap. Plus anything on Wikia is profit for Jimbo. I really want to move the Military wiki I have been building out of there but don't really know where to take it.

How many pages is it? If it's cc-by-sa, it would be welcome on Encyc, or I can walk you through the process of setting up your own wiki.

You know I'm a big consumer of military history, even if I don't write much of it anymore.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:18 pm

Thanks. Yeah its all CC-BY-SA.

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 6:23 pm

Heh. it's got 240,407 actual content pages. (of which about half are moved after some time).

The full update for those interested on how I have been getting those pages onto World Wiki, is that the Wikia dumps are very incomplete, so there are now two bots scraping the site to finish the job. This takes even longer and is also overloading the server because I set it like so:

Code: Select all

python pwb.py transferbot -family:milwikia -lang:en -start -tofamily:worldwiki -tolang:en-gb -pt:0 -maxlag:0

Meanwhile I have to clear 870k+ jobs from the job queue so I can then mess with the namespaces and get the military logo to appear on military wiki pages...

Oh the wonders of migrating from Wikia. It's basically impossible.

PS. I setup an account on Encyc.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 6:26 pm

Thanks for the help. BTW I was kinda waiting till you were done before I started meddling with things so I wasn't stepping on edits with the bots and stuff. I just didn't want you to think I abandoned the idea.

Auggie · Unread post by **Auggie** » Wed Aug 01, 2018 6:15 pm

Sounds like you guys know what you're doing. I poked around on the site a little and while there is some great content, I do agree that Wikia is holding you back. It's almost like it's designed to look spammy.

Thanks for registering on Encyc. Good to have you.

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Wed Aug 01, 2018 7:36 pm

Auggie wrote:[...] It's almost like it's designed to look spammy. [...]

Yeah that never made much sense to me, it's a for-profit business so I always thought they would have some staff to make it look better/be more usable. But alas they simply cut monobook support and replaced it with nothing.

I assume it is surviving off people looking for Marvel/Disney stuff and it popping up high on the search, rather a glorified clickbait machine and less the useable reference work.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Wed Aug 01, 2018 7:45 pm

Wikia/fandom could be a great site and make a ton of money but alas I think Jimbo's involvement in the enterprise, what little he does, is influencing the site in the wrong direction.

There are a couple good devs and my interactions with the staff have been mostly positive but there are a couple that need to be axed, they need to do a much better job at development and the skin/display needs a complete makeover.

There are quite a few good things I do like about Wikia, but I think in general it's poorly managed and that's not looking to change anytime soon.

Auggie · Unread post by **Auggie** » Wed Aug 01, 2018 10:25 pm

It's a cash cow at this point with no vision for the future. Unlikely to ever be more than it already is.

The only way it ever made money was because of intentional brand confusion with Wikipedia and forced movement of "fancruft" from Wikipedia to Wikia.

Johnny Au · Unread post by **Johnny Au** » Thu Aug 02, 2018 1:49 am

There's NIWA as well, which is a collection of Nintendo-centric wikis.

Bulbapedia is by far the most popular of the NIWA wikis.

Beeblebrox · Unread post by **Beeblebrox** » Thu Aug 02, 2018 3:21 am

I just looked at encyc for the first time. It’s not terribly impressive. Looking at the recent changes I saw our friend Dysklyver editing the article on Jimmy Wales so I checked that out. It’s like 30 paragraphs, much of it clearly intended to criticize Wales and Wikipedia. For comparison I looked up my home state of Alaska and found a sub-stub three sentences long. I thought I’d try some looking at a biological/zoological and looked up “gibbon”. No article at all. Remembering the old tale about cultural bias on Wikipedia being demonstrated by the fact that there was no real article on Africa when it began, I thought I’d see what they had on the subject after 10 years. Behold:

“ Africa is a continent on Earth. It is south of Europe. It is bordered by the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, on its west and east coasts, respectively. And it is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea on its north coast.

There is much poverty in Africa and it is often considered to be a less developed area of Earth.”

Between that and the clear statement on the main page that nothing is checked for accuracy I don’t see why anyone would take this seriously as a resource or find it remotely useful.

Beeblebrox · Unread post by **Beeblebrox** » Thu Aug 02, 2018 4:02 am

And then there’s this: https://encyc.org/wiki/The_Horrors_of_Z ... rse_Racing

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Thu Aug 02, 2018 1:53 pm

In fairness though, Wikipedia started off the same way. They just had 15 years to mature, got preferential treatment by Google, conned tens of millions out of donors, stolen content from other sources, etc.

So not all is lost just yet, it may take a few years.

Auggie · Unread post by **Auggie** » Thu Aug 02, 2018 2:57 pm

Kumioko wrote:In fairness though, Wikipedia started off the same way. They just had 15 years to mature, got preferential treatment by Google, conned tens of millions out of donors, stolen content from other sources, etc.

So not all is lost just yet, it may take a few years.

Yep. Google/Wikipedia strangled most other big sites by depriving them of search traffic. It was a mass extinction event. Encyc is like the little rodent-like mammal that survives in the wreckage of what was once a vast and diverse knowledge ecosystem.

Beeblebrox wrote:I just looked at encyc for the first time. It’s not terribly impressive. Looking at the recent changes I saw our friend Dysklyver editing the article on Jimmy Wales so I checked that out. It’s like 30 paragraphs, much of it clearly intended to criticize Wales and Wikipedia. For comparison I looked up my home state of Alaska and found a sub-stub three sentences long. I thought I’d try some looking at a biological/zoological and looked up “gibbon”. No article at all.

Yes rather than import articles I took the line of writing our own for the most part. My thinking is that even a poorly-written stub is more useful to a reader than a cut and paste bloated monstrosity. People already know where to get those.

Gibbon is a good idea for an article although I don't know enough off the top of my head to do more than a few lines.

Beeblebrox wrote:Remembering the old tale about cultural bias on Wikipedia being demonstrated by the fact that there was no real article on Africa when it began, I thought I’d see what they had on the subject after 10 years.

Good catch. This article definitely needs a lot of work.

Beeblebrox wrote: Between that and the clear statement on the main page that nothing is checked for accuracy I don’t see why anyone would take this seriously as a resource or find it remotely useful.

Wikipedia has pretty much the same statement in its disclaimer. Surely you knew this already?

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Thu Aug 02, 2018 3:09 pm

Yeah Wikipedia has a lovely disclaimer, I copied it for World Wiki because I was too busy to write my own and it's cc-by-sa licensed.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Thu Aug 02, 2018 5:10 pm

@Auggie, I had sort of the opposite thinking with the military wiki. I knew there was no way to compete with the content that is already on Wikipedia, so since it's freely distributable I imported it but then I have a massive AWB script that goes through and removes unneeded templates, terminology, comments, categories, non military related links and other crap we don't need. Of course it's hard to keep that much up to date, which even Wikipedia struggles with, but it builds a baseline anyway. And yes of course we do attribute to Wikipedia when applicable or note that it was deleted from Wikipedia if that's appropriate.

We have also been adding a lot of articles including those that don't meet Wikipedia's notability criteria. Such as Navy Cross recipients or others that Wikipedia folks have deleted (like the Iron Cross recipients that KEcoffman purged).

Right now I am working on a AWB module that will build Infobox's for those that don't have them. Quite a chore but I'll get there.

Auggie · Unread post by **Auggie** » Thu Aug 02, 2018 8:49 pm

That's pretty cool you know how to do that script stuff. Google will probably ding you for copying content from Wikipedia, but it might be worth it so you don't get criticized for being too small or missing articles on important stuff.

Back in the day I started four of the really big WWII articles. Of course someone else probably would have done it eventually, but just so no one thinks I was always so useless on-wiki.

Beeblebrox · Unread post by **Beeblebrox** » Sun Aug 19, 2018 1:30 am

By the way the proposal to close Simple has finally been formally closed. Simple isn’t going anywhere.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Sun Aug 19, 2018 9:28 am

Beeblebrox wrote:By the way the proposal to close Simple has finally been formally closed. Simple isn’t going anywhere.

Fireworks and dancing in the streets!

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Sun Aug 19, 2018 3:09 pm

Really it would have been a shock had it been closed.

karmafist · Unread post by **karmafist** » Mon Sep 03, 2018 8:48 pm

mynameisnotdave wrote:There has been a proposal to close the Simple English Wikipedia.

At the moment, most people are voting no, even if the original proposer does make some salient points.

I put in a weak oppose.

Good. Burn it all down.

karmafist · Unread post by **karmafist** » Mon Sep 03, 2018 8:48 pm

Dysklyver wrote:This has received limited coverage in the Signpost, with the possibility of a full feature next month.

The Signpost died a long time ago.

Ca$hBag · Unread post by **Ca$hBag** » Tue Sep 04, 2018 12:36 am

How about closing them all? If Wikipedia was removed, all the various search results would get their due traffic and people could develop their own opinion on things rather than Wikipedia decide for them and passing it off as a matter of fact.

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Tue Sep 04, 2018 9:05 am

Ca$hBag wrote:How about closing them all? If Wikipedia was removed, all the various search results would get their due traffic and people could develop their own opinion on things rather than Wikipedia decide for them and passing it off as a matter of fact.

RfC: Proposal to close the Simple English Wikipedia.

Result: Rejected by the WMF.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Tue Sep 04, 2018 1:31 pm

Ca$hBag wrote:How about closing them all? If Wikipedia was removed, all the various search results would get their due traffic and people could develop their own opinion on things rather than Wikipedia decide for them and passing it off as a matter of fact.

If Wikipedia was removed, you'd get a lot of results from Wikipedia scrapers.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Tue Sep 04, 2018 1:33 pm

Dysklyver wrote:
Ca$hBag wrote:How about closing them all? If Wikipedia was removed, all the various search results would get their due traffic and people could develop their own opinion on things rather than Wikipedia decide for them and passing it off as a matter of fact.
RfC: Proposal to close the Simple English Wikipedia.

Result: Rejected by the WMF.

I hope no one really though that this project was going to get closed down but I have to admit it gained a lot more steam from the deletionists than I thought it would. That sets the stage for it to be resubmitted again later.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Tue Sep 04, 2018 1:52 pm

Dysklyver wrote:RfC: Proposal to close the Simple English Wikipedia.

Result: Rejected by the WMF.

The WMF should be cautious about rejecting the results of RfCs. If they interfere with decisions of the Community, they might have to accept responsibility for things.

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Tue Sep 04, 2018 2:26 pm

Poetlister wrote:
Dysklyver wrote:RfC: Proposal to close the Simple English Wikipedia.

Result: Rejected by the WMF.

The WMF should be cautious about rejecting the results of RfCs. If they interfere with decisions of the Community, they might have to accept responsibility for things.

The WMF would never allow the community to commit "project suicide" on the flagship project. I expect they would just desysop everyone and impose martial law.

Oddly that might pave the way for a massive change in direction which could really allow the WMF to become an advocacy group for real like they want, so I doubt they would be bothered.

Win Win.